Adding a new ebook format

[shentar]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I think you're confused about hard and sym/soft links. AFAIK hardlinks wont stretch across networks, they have to be on the same partition see What is a hard link? -- by The Linux Information Project.

Which is why I referred to symlinks - which will stretch across file systems and partitions and networks.
BR

You are quite right about the difference between hard and soft (or sym) links, but you have misunderstood what I am actually doing.

A hard link allows multiple directory entries to reference the same inode, which points to the actual on-disk storage and contains a reference count for the number of entries pointing to it. Because of this a hard link can only be used within a file system, but in my case the file system is the raid array and I am creating the links from within the NAS operating system so provided the calibre library and my master file archive are on the same raid volume all is OK. Normal file operations over samba or NFS do not break the link. Eventually I would like to do away with the master archive but I can't do that right away as I have a lot of other material such as poster art, trailers, making-of documentaries etc. and if I get too ambitious and go for a complete solution I'll get bogged down and achieve nothing. The calibre library of linked files is a good 80% starter project and I can figure out what to do with the other stuff at a later stage.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by shentar

You are quite right about the difference between hard and soft (or sym) links, but you have misunderstood what I am actually doing.

gotcha - I assumed (for no good reason I can think of right now) that the library was on the client and the files were on the NAS.

I would suggest checking out what happens if you 'rename' a book by correcting a Title/Author and if you use the Copy to Library options (copy & move) — even if 'those things will never happen' I'd be interested as to what you discover.

Originally Posted by shentar

I have a lot of other material such as poster art, trailers, making-of documentaries etc. and if I get too ambitious and go for a complete solution I'll get bogged down and achieve nothing.

This is precisely the sort of thing for which I use Evernote see Calibre and Evernote

I deleted your double post

BR

[eschwartz]

I believe it should be safe, as IIRC on supported filesystems calibre moves files using hardlinks and unlinking the old file.