Failure to Rename Books

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's a big caveat, though. Forget to pause it and you could find yourself up the proverbial creek. It's far safer (IMHO) to simply store a copy of your library in Dropbox, and use a sync tool to manually sync that copy with your live library.

@HarryT - I'm with you on this

I used Dropbox for a while. but not for calibre data, IIRC it has CLI options for Pause and Resume. So one could script something like

dropbox.exe -pause
calibre.exe --with_library "blah blah blah"
dropbox.exe -resume

But I'm not sure what would happen if calibre was restarted for some reason (add/remove a custom column, added a plug-in, restart in debug etc). Would the dropbox.exe -resume be executed before the restart, would it be the same on the 3 OS's.

And IIRC Resume is option on the dropbox tray item context menu - whoops.

BR

PS : Sod's and Murphy's Laws are subtly different - maybe too subtle for those from the Far Eastern Shore, The basic laws - Murphy’s and Sod’s

[eschwartz]

HarryT, JSWolf, I am not sure why you feel the need to protect users from making their own informed risk analysis. I prefer to make the options clear and let the user decide!

In the long run, you are only encouraging people to not think for themselves, which is the true cause of most errors.
Expressing your own personal comfort zone as The One Single Option, does nothing whatsoever other than confuse people.

...

BetterRed -- calibre will respawn itself on top of the initial process, so the script will never proceed to the next command until calibre is properly closed.

As for scripting Dropbox, they have a python script which interacts via unix sockets with Dropbox and allows you to issue a "dropbox.py [start|stop|status]" command. But I don't believe there is a Windows equivalent.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

BetterRed -- calibre will respawn itself on top of the initial process, so the script will never proceed to the next command until calibre is properly closed.

Thanks - that's good to know, I have thought about running calibre from a script from time to time, but I always found a simpler way to do whatever it was

BR

[JSWolf]

How does one know when the Dropbox process is done copying?

I know I have closed Calibre only to want to reopen it right away. But in order to do that Dropbox would have to be finished.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Thank you HarryT and JSWolf for your pedanticism... I prefer to make the options clear and let the user decide!

Expressing your own personal comfort zone as The One Single Option, does nothing whatsoever other than confuse people.

...

BetterRed -- calibre will respawn itself on top of the initial process, so the script will never proceed to the next command until calibre is properly closed.

As for scripting Dropbox, they have a python script which interacts via unix sockets with Dropbox and allows you to issue a "dropbox.py [start|stop|status]" command. But I don't believe there is a Windows equivalent.

Do you really feel it's OK to risk your library?

[eschwartz]

Do you really feel it is relevant?

But as it happens, I don't believe it is worth it to risk my library, and yet I keep my library directly in Dropbox -- I don't regard it as risky, therefore your question is fundamentally flawed.

Nor does it matter whether Dropbox is finished syncing, if you do not modify your calibre library from multiple computers. I don't, therefore the only worry is actually having simultaneous access violations -- which is dead simple to solve in a robust, absolutely accurate manner.

...

The proof is that I have done it for years and years, and never once messed up my calibre library.

So much for hasty absolutes. Did I mention I believe it wiser to offer information, then leave the choice in the hands of the questioner?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How does one know when the Dropbox process is done copying?

I know I have closed Calibre only to want to reopen it right away. But in order to do that Dropbox would have to be finished.

Surely it animates it tray icon when its syncing.

Are you implying Dropbox synching is uninterruptable, if that's true I'm flabbergasted anyone would use it.

Even a miserable bit torrent client like utorrent can do that - i.e. pause its seeding and leeching until its resumed - next bloody week if needs be.

BR

[eschwartz]

Then let me ease your mind -- like most of the civilized e-world, Dropbox can be interrupted.

They call that "Pausing".

...

As long as Dropbox and calibre do not run at the same moment and mess each other up with file locks, it doesn't matter how much or little Dropbox successfully syncs each time.

[theducks]

You got me
Why not a Plugin Dropbox seems to have a CLI

status       get current status of the dropboxd
help         provide help
puburl       get public url of a file in your dropbox
stop         stop dropboxd
running      return whether dropbox is running
start        start dropboxd
filestatus   get current sync status of one or more files
ls           list directory contents with current sync status
autostart    automatically start dropbox at login
exclude      ignores/excludes a directory from syncing