Books with no Formats

[Talung]

Hi there,

Just got a PRS-505 and am enjoying fiddling with it at the moment. Calibre is a great utility. Thanks.

My current setup is having my Calibre folder sync between multiple machines using rsync (1 linux laptop, 1 server, 1 XP machine). There are various reasons for this, but partly for backups. However, it seems to have exposed a problem that I am not sure how to get around.

During one of my syncs, it appears that some files went missing. I think it might have something to do with ntfs, ext3 filename things. However, I am now left with an interesting problem. I have some books with no formats at all. Not really a problem as I have all the original books stored in a different folder. Problem is finding the ones with no format.

I have tried something like this in the metasearch:
> no (formatdf or format:lit or ... etc.)

it returns nothing.

> format:none

also nothing. Any tricks to finding these entries with no books assigned?

Thanks
Tal

[ssimon2000]

Maybe on the advanced search, enter the files types that exist in your list into the "negative" list (the field that says "But don't show entries that have...". I haven't tried it, but it should work...

[Talung]

Hi,

Tried that and get results similar to my 'format' one.

> not pdf and not txt and not epub and not lit and not ... etc.

Problem with this is that it is not just checking the formats. It results in nothing being returned. This was the reason I was using the formatdf search string.

Thanks for the feedback anyway.

[kovidgoyal]

not format:lrf and not format:epub and not format:whatever

[Talung]

Hi Kovid,

I have tried that also. Here is the full line I use:

not formatdf and not format:epub and not format:lit and not format:lrf and not format:txt and not format:chm and not formatrc and not format:rtf and not format:rar

This returns me no results at all. Is there a limit on the logical expression?

If I cut down the expressions, I can find some of the books with 'none' format amongst the others.

Thanks

[kovidgoyal]

No, there isn't (it's a recursize parser) so for example the following works for me

not format:lrf and not format:epub and not format:txt and not format:pdf and not format:cbr and not format:cbz and not format:rb

[Talung]

Thanks Kovid,

I will try again tonight on my windows box to see if that works. Been playing through VNC on the linux box and it doesn't seem to.

Will update later with my programs.

Thanks again.

[kovidgoyal]

There shouldn't be any difference based on platform

[Talung]

Hi Kovid,

You are correct. Both platforms return no results even though I know they exist. This is on version 0.4.133

I have about 1310 books in my library. Seems like a very strange problem. Could the list somehow be corrupt, ie. is there a way to rebuild it without losing all my Metadata (spent days getting ISBN's and book covers)

[kovidgoyal]

Backup up your library folder, then use the save to disk button to save all books to disk, then delete all books, then re-add them using the arrow next to the add books button

[Talung]

I have figured out the problem.

Thanks for your help Kovid and others. I have figured out what my problem is. Essentially I believe it because I am modifying books on the Linux system and then rsyncing to the Windows system where I in turn modify them some more and rsync back. Somewhere along the line certain folder names get changed in Case.

eg.
Piers Anthony/Chaining The Lady (742)
Piers Anthony/Chaining the Lady (742)

The case of 'the' got changed. The books reside in the the uppercase one but the metadata points to the lowercase one. This means in the web intereface it shows the formats as being present, but in the application as not being present. This also explains why the "not format:epub etc." command returns them as being there even though the application says they are not.

Gonna be a bit tricky to find, but I think a troll through the folder list and look for duplicate numbers in '()' should reveal any folders that have been duplicated. Then its a manual application fix to change the book name to point to the correct folder.

Thanks
Tal

BTW, in case anybody is interested. To find the folders that are not unique but contain the same calibre index number in brackets I am using this bash command line:
$ find -iname "*(*)" | awk '{print $NF}' | sort | uniq -cd