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Old 05-01-2010, 08:02 PM   #1
srid
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Lightbulb Deleting preloaded books from Kobo

Kobo ships with about 100 preloaded books, which you can also download for free from sites like feedbooks.com. As there is no way to organize your books, navigating to your favourite book can be cumbersome.

I chose to delete the preloaded books and upload the handful of books that can be easily accessed.

On Mac OS X, I used the following command to delete the preloaded books.

sqlite3 /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite "delete from content where ___userid != 'adobe_user'"

Make sure that you make a backup of the "KoboReader.sqlite" file before modifying it.

Once you are done, eject the Kobo and "reset" it (see the pin hole at the back).

Last edited by srid; 05-01-2010 at 08:07 PM. Reason: you must reset it
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Old 05-03-2010, 02:36 AM   #2
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Yes, DO make sure you have a backup of the sqlite file.

I deleted the file and reset the kobo and managed to finally get rid of the default books however, ALL my books remained there BUT I had no navigation to get to them.
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Old 05-04-2010, 03:08 PM   #3
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Modifying databases through command-line instructions is not a newbie skill. Why not wait for completion of the app that is being worked on just for this purpose? See the forum topic on sqlite database.
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Old 05-05-2010, 02:08 PM   #4
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Modifying databases through command-line instructions is not a newbie skill.
That's what I'm doing now. What I did was before the idea of writing the app. came-up.
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Old 05-05-2010, 07:11 PM   #5
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You can also go into the database and take out specific books. I used SQLite Expert (free) personal edition (and no this isn't a plug!). Anyway, it worked very nicely.
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Old 05-09-2010, 11:01 PM   #6
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hello

Mac OS X , below as posted

sqlite3 /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite "delete from content where ___userid != 'adobe_user'"


I wounder if this command can be used in a Linux OS with a modified path ??

This would delete any purchased books , Are they still available on the kobobooks site???? to resyc ???

Corona's post

using windows sqlite editor , is there a similar Linux program
for sqlite DB's

Harry
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Old 05-16-2010, 04:42 PM   #7
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Can you choose which books you specifically want to delete from the free ones?
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Old 05-16-2010, 04:48 PM   #8
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Can you choose which books you specifically want to delete from the free ones?
Yes. You need to know SQL for that.
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Old 05-16-2010, 08:29 PM   #9
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Crude but (apparently) effective...

I got rid of the 100 books, and everything else. (The "everything else" was books I purchased and checked out of the library; I put those back in at the end.)

So far anyway my Kobo doesn't seem like a brick. But really, I don't know what will happen to you and your Kobo if you try this.

The first thing I did was go to ADE and take everything I could off of the Kobo.

Then I backed up the Kobo's file system by copying it to someplace on my hard drive. I don't actually know if this would be effective if needed. Maybe it wouldn't work to just copy it all back to the Kobo. I didn't have to, so I don't know. I just copied everything in the Kobo -- using Windows Explorer -- onto the hard drive.

Everything else below I did right on the Kobo, with Windows Explorer and a Firefox add-on called "SQLite Manager." The Kobo came up on my computer as drive G.

I had some PDFs in the G:\ directory. I deleted those.

I opened the G:\books file with Notepad and deleted everything in the file. It's just a text file; I think this was some values of the variable "contentID" in the database content table -- maybe for the freebee books? Anyway. I saved the now-empty file.

I went to G:\.kobo\images folder and deleted all the files (this is the cover images).

I used the SQLite Manager to open the database and delete all of the entries (but not the table structure!) of the tables: "content", "shortcover_page", and "volume_shortcovers". This took a few minutes, definitely. (I did it with simple SQLite statements; line-by-line manually would take forever.)

In the "user" table I deleted the user "Nickel Bundle" (which left just me as a user). "Nickel Bundle" appears at various places, and I assume it pertains to the 100 freebees.

I didn't fool around with the "DbVersion" table.

Added step: compact the database ("vacuum" command in SQLite parlance). This takes a while.

I closed the database, ejected and unplugged the Kobo. Seemed okay.

I plugged it back in again and added the books I purchased from Kobo store, and checked-out books in the ADE. As usual, I had to go into the Kobo and move the checked-out PDF books up to the root (G:\) directory so they would appear at all (as documents, not books).

Interesting facts:
-it seems to have worked just fine.
-the G:\books file remains empty, but that doesn't seem to have any effect.
-at some point while I was fooling around with the db (I didn't notice it when it happened) the red battery-ok light came on. I haven't seen it for ten days!

Last edited by corona; 05-16-2010 at 09:29 PM. Reason: added compacting step
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Old 05-16-2010, 08:50 PM   #10
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The database didn't get smaller because you didn't actually delete the books, just the indexs
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Old 05-16-2010, 08:59 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinger View Post
The database didn't get smaller because you didn't actually delete the books, just the indexs
Here I reveal my ignorance of databases. The (very large) table "shortcover-page" is what seems to contain the pages themselves. Or does it only refer to them? If that's so, then where is the data? Because I cleaned out that table.

Hmm; yeah, okay. That's kind of embarrassing. But at least I don't have to look at them anymore (and the red light came on). It would be nice to know how to actually expunge the data itself.

Last edited by corona; 05-16-2010 at 09:05 PM.
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Old 05-16-2010, 09:13 PM   #12
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you're correct, the actual page data is in the shortcover_page table, in the 'FormattedPage'.

This should be helpful to you:
http://wiki.durbn.net/koboko/index.php/DBSchemaV2


EDIT: OH! I missed that you deleted cleared the shortcover_page table in your original post. In that case you DID delete the book data. This is the reason the dbase hasn't shrunk:

Quote:
I deleted a lot of data but the database file did not get any smaller. Is this a bug?

No. When you delete information from an SQLite database, the unused disk space is added to an internal "free-list" and is reused the next time you insert data. The disk space is not lost. But neither is it returned to the operating system.

If you delete a lot of data and want to shrink the database file, run the VACUUM command. VACUUM will reconstruct the database from scratch. This will leave the database with an empty free-list and a file that is minimal in size. Note, however, that the VACUUM can take some time to run (around a half second per megabyte on the Linux box where SQLite is developed) and it can use up to twice as much temporary disk space as the original file while it is running.
If you're still using the Firefox SQLite Manager to do this, running the 'Compact Database' from the Database menu will run the above command and shrink your dbase.

Last edited by Stinger; 05-16-2010 at 09:24 PM.
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Old 05-16-2010, 09:25 PM   #13
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Quote:
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If you're still using the Firefox SQLite Manager to do this, running the 'Compact Database' from the Database menu will run the above command and shrink your dbase.
That works! Thanks; the database is now _much_ smaller!
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Old 05-17-2010, 01:49 PM   #14
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Is it also possible to get rid of the preloaded 100 books by just simply going in to the menu on the Kobo and reset it to factory default? I would imagine this would get rid of anything other than the OS, so no books, no settings etc.

(Still waiting for mine to ship to Holland, so haven't been able to try it, just wondering)
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Old 05-17-2010, 02:20 PM   #15
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Is it also possible to get rid of the preloaded 100 books by just simply going in to the menu on the Kobo and reset it to factory default?
Didn't work for me.
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