Touch images folder content (problem?!)

Geco · 06-25-2013, 12:28 PM

Hi all,
I've noticed one thing that I'd like to share to understand if it's only my Touch or...

The fact is that I often take a look at suggestions and browse the Store from the Kobo but I've noticed that even when I do not buy books (and I've bought a bunch of them!), the free available space of Kobo is reduced.
Then I've tried to understand why and I've found more than 10k (yes, 10 thousands!) files (not 10kB, actually >10000 files as number!) in the images directory.
For each book I've bought, there are three pictures of the cover, for each book I've downloaded the previes, there are three pictures, for each book in the wishlist there are three pictures. And, at this point, it could even be ok... even if the ePub themselves should contain their own covers without the need to have them in three sizes according to when they are shown... why three?! Why saved!? Crazy...
Anyway, not only those books, but also all the books I've said "Not Interested" or all those free books I've read and discarded, all the books I've seen the cover while browsing the store... all those books, their covers, are saved three times in my images folder on Kobo Touch!!! WHY?!

I've tried to delete the whole content of the folder images and I'll never open the store again, I've saved more than 300MB of free space and, anyway, the "suggested" books, the previews, the "daily" books shown in main page of the site are still there...
Is it possible to remove them in some normal way or should I have to delete a lot of file from time to time to avoid images overloading?
I love to browse the shop through kobo, I love to randomly download previews or free books, bu the fact that even simply browsing the store will save the covers (three of them!) on my Kobo is ridiculous!

Someone else has noticed this?

DNSB · 06-25-2013, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geco

For each book I've bought, there are three pictures of the cover, for each book I've downloaded the previes, there are three pictures, for each book in the wishlist there are three pictures. And, at this point, it could even be ok... even if the ePub themselves should contain their own covers without the need to have them in three sizes according to when they are shown... why three?! Why saved!? Crazy...
Anyway, not only those books, but also all the books I've said "Not Interested" or all those free books I've read and discarded, all the books I've seen the cover while browsing the store... all those books, their covers, are saved three times in my images folder on Kobo Touch!!! WHY?!

The images are saved in triplicate for the 3 sizes the Kobo ereaders use. I'd guess this is being done to save having to locate and resize the image each time you access it.

And yes, I find it annoying that it saves them for all books. I can see why it is done to allow seeing your wishlist books, as an example, when you are not connected to the Internet. I can't see why Kobo does not implement a garbage collection routine that would clear out images that are no longer associated with any books (deleted, not interested, why the expletive deleted did they show me that recommendation, etc.).

Regards,
David

Uschiekid · 06-25-2013, 10:40 PM

Yes, I complained (a little) about this awhile back...I don't browse as much as I did when I first got my glo, so I'm not as high up in file numbers as you, but considering the number of books on my main memory...too many images!

So yes, you aren't the only one.

Geco · 06-27-2013, 01:28 PM

Glad to know that I'm not alone... I wonder how to directly open a real issue, without passing through 2-3 levels of customer support...

Anak · 06-27-2013, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geco

Anyway, not only those books, but also all the books I've said "Not Interested" or all those free books I've read and discarded, all the books I've seen the cover while browsing the store...

I recognize your issues with the cover images.
But marking books as "Not interested" is Kobo talk for "Let's offer this book again and again…"
…
[text removed]
and put in another thread

Geco · 06-29-2013, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anak

I recognize your issues with the cover images.
But marking books as "Not interested" is Kobo talk for "Let's offer this book again and again…"
…
[text removed]
and put in another thread

Actually... not for me: every book I set as "not interested" or "already read", has never appeared anymore.

paola · 06-29-2013, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geco

Actually... not for me: every book I set as "not interested" or "already read", has never appeared anymore.

did you do this on the Kobo webpage?

I've tried clearing the list on my Mini, but the only options are "buy" and "not interested", "already read" is not available!

Geco · 06-29-2013, 01:14 PM

I did that on Kobo itself or on the Kobo Desktop application or on the web page. When I am "not interested" in one book in either of the three, I don't see it anymore.
Could this be related to the images folder? Whether those "not interested" book are saved there, they won't appear anymore?
Since I've found those lots of images and deleted them I've not browsed anymore but... could it be?

davidfor · 06-30-2013, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geco

I did that on Kobo itself or on the Kobo Desktop application or on the web page. When I am "not interested" in one book in either of the three, I don't see it anymore.
Could this be related to the images folder? Whether those "not interested" book are saved there, they won't appear anymore?
Since I've found those lots of images and deleted them I've not browsed anymore but... could it be?

I doubt it. I haven't checked for a while, but the images directory has always seemed to be maintained correctly here. Any time I have checked, the number of files pretty much matched what was expected from the devices database.

DNSB · 06-30-2013, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

I doubt it. I haven't checked for a while, but the images directory has always seemed to be maintained correctly here. Any time I have checked, the number of files pretty much matched what was expected from the devices database.

Currently, I have 3 kepubs on my Aura. When I look in the images directory, I have 318 files -- enough for 106 books. When I open the files in a viewer, I see books that I have never seen other than as recommendations --books that I would probably never read short of sheer desperation for the printed word.

Books such as Tina Fey's Bossypants, Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, Lorelei James' Redneck Romeo, 7 books by Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle/Amanda Quick, Carl Hiiasen's Bad Monkey, Linda Warren's Once A Cowboy, etc.

There were also Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games series (which my daughter has) and David Weber's Safehold series and Joe Haldeman's Forever War (which I already have in epub format from another ebook store).

Regards,
David

davidfor · 06-30-2013, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

Currently, I have 3 kepubs on my Aura. When I look in the images directory, I have 318 files -- enough for 106 books. When I open the files in a viewer, I see books that I have never seen other than as recommendations --books that I would probably never read short of sheer desperation for the printed word.

Books such as Tina Fey's Bossypants, Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, Lorelei James' Redneck Romeo, 7 books by Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle/Amanda Quick, Carl Hiiasen's Bad Monkey, Linda Warren's Once A Cowboy, etc.

There were also Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games series (which my daughter has) and David Weber's Safehold series and Joe Haldeman's Forever War (which I already have in epub format from another ebook store).

Recommendations get an entry in the devices database. The ImageID for these should match a cover in the images directory. So far, any that I have checked have had a match. I occasionally think of writing some code to do the check and cleanup, but it hasn't bugged me enough yet.

DNSB · 07-01-2013, 01:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

Recommendations get an entry in the devices database. The ImageID for these should match a cover in the images directory. So far, any that I have checked have had a match. I occasionally think of writing some code to do the check and cleanup, but it hasn't bugged me enough yet.

My complaint is that I don't have the ebook but I do have the cover image collection. That's where I would like to see some garbage collection routine run to clear out the images I don't have any need for.

That the majority of those images are for books that I have, at best, zero interest in makes it even more annoying.

Regards,
David

GeoffR · 07-03-2013, 08:05 AM

A utility program that would go through the images directory and delete every cover not associated with a book on the device would be very useful.

I have 495 books on my Glo, including about 100 kepubs. But when I checked I found over 5500 files in the images directory. It doesn't seem to have had any bad effects yet, but I'm sure it would eventually. So I'm now gradually going through and manually deleting the covers I don't recognise.

Edit: Now I think about it, if there is a SQL command that can list the base file name of every image associated with a book on the device, then it would be easy to delete all the ones not in that list using ordinary unix shell commands.

PeterT · 07-03-2013, 08:37 AM

@GeoffR: I think my approach would be to move the images directory, make a new one, and then for each image found in the SQL database move the corresponding image back to the new images directory.

GeoffR · 07-03-2013, 10:43 AM

OK instead of just deleting the image files I set the "show recommendations" option in Calibre's KoboTouch driver and deleted all the old recommendations. Easy. This got rid of most of the extra covers, though there are still a few hundred left.

I noticed one big improvement after deleting over 1000 recommendations from the database: Sync time has dropped dramatically. The "loading content" phase of sync was taking over two minutes before, now it takes just a few seconds.

06-25-2013, 12:28 PM	#1
Geco Zealot Posts: 112 Karma: 100 Join Date: Aug 2011 Device: Touch, Aura	images folder content (problem?!) Hi all, I've noticed one thing that I'd like to share to understand if it's only my Touch or... The fact is that I often take a look at suggestions and browse the Store from the Kobo but I've noticed that even when I do not buy books (and I've bought a bunch of them!), the free available space of Kobo is reduced. Then I've tried to understand why and I've found more than 10k (yes, 10 thousands!) files (not 10kB, actually >10000 files as number!) in the images directory. For each book I've bought, there are three pictures of the cover, for each book I've downloaded the previes, there are three pictures, for each book in the wishlist there are three pictures. And, at this point, it could even be ok... even if the ePub themselves should contain their own covers without the need to have them in three sizes according to when they are shown... why three?! Why saved!? Crazy... Anyway, not only those books, but also all the books I've said "Not Interested" or all those free books I've read and discarded, all the books I've seen the cover while browsing the store... all those books, their covers, are saved three times in my images folder on Kobo Touch!!! WHY?! I've tried to delete the whole content of the folder images and I'll never open the store again, I've saved more than 300MB of free space and, anyway, the "suggested" books, the previews, the "daily" books shown in main page of the site are still there... Is it possible to remove them in some normal way or should I have to delete a lot of file from time to time to avoid images overloading? I love to browse the shop through kobo, I love to randomly download previews or free books, bu the fact that even simply browsing the store will save the covers (three of them!) on my Kobo is ridiculous! Someone else has noticed this?

07-03-2013, 08:05 AM	#13
GeoffR Wizard Posts: 3,821 Karma: 19162882 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Te Riu-a-Māui Device: Kobo Glo	A utility program that would go through the images directory and delete every cover not associated with a book on the device would be very useful. I have 495 books on my Glo, including about 100 kepubs. But when I checked I found over 5500 files in the images directory. It doesn't seem to have had any bad effects yet, but I'm sure it would eventually. So I'm now gradually going through and manually deleting the covers I don't recognise. Edit: Now I think about it, if there is a SQL command that can list the base file name of every image associated with a book on the device, then it would be easy to delete all the ones not in that list using ordinary unix shell commands. Last edited by GeoffR; 07-03-2013 at 08:17 AM. Reason: spelling

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06-25-2013, 10:40 PM	#3
Uschiekid Tenrec Posts: 724 Karma: 1076988 Join Date: Oct 2012 Device: Kobo Aura One, Kobo Glo	Yes, I complained (a little) about this awhile back...I don't browse as much as I did when I first got my glo, so I'm not as high up in file numbers as you, but considering the number of books on my main memory...too many images! So yes, you aren't the only one.

06-27-2013, 01:28 PM	#4
Geco Zealot Posts: 112 Karma: 100 Join Date: Aug 2011 Device: Touch, Aura	Glad to know that I'm not alone... I wonder how to directly open a real issue, without passing through 2-3 levels of customer support...

06-29-2013, 01:14 PM	#8
Geco Zealot Posts: 112 Karma: 100 Join Date: Aug 2011 Device: Touch, Aura	I did that on Kobo itself or on the Kobo Desktop application or on the web page. When I am "not interested" in one book in either of the three, I don't see it anymore. Could this be related to the images folder? Whether those "not interested" book are saved there, they won't appear anymore? Since I've found those lots of images and deleted them I've not browsed anymore but... could it be?

07-03-2013, 08:37 AM	#14
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,168 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	@GeoffR: I think my approach would be to move the images directory, make a new one, and then for each image found in the SQL database move the corresponding image back to the new images directory.

07-03-2013, 10:43 AM	#15
GeoffR Wizard Posts: 3,821 Karma: 19162882 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Te Riu-a-Māui Device: Kobo Glo	OK instead of just deleting the image files I set the "show recommendations" option in Calibre's KoboTouch driver and deleted all the old recommendations. Easy. This got rid of most of the extra covers, though there are still a few hundred left. I noticed one big improvement after deleting over 1000 recommendations from the database: Sync time has dropped dramatically. The "loading content" phase of sync was taking over two minutes before, now it takes just a few seconds.

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