Thread: Aura ONE What is the best way to restore Kobo annotations from a backup?
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Old 07-03-2019, 01:24 AM   #3
davidfor
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Posts: 24,905
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos
Quote:
Originally Posted by pl8o View Post
My Kobo (Aura ONE, 4.15.12920) has thrown out its annotations again. This time, it has thrown out *all* the annotations for *one* sideloaded .epub book.
I think what happened is caused by a bug in firmware 4.15.12920. Bookmarks are not being stored correctly if the internal file the bookmark is in does not have a ToC entry. In this case, the ContentID column in the Bookmarks table will be empty. Your solution of setting the value to the same as a successful bookmark should have fixed it.

There might also be a problem related to having multiple ToC entries in a file. That has some issues, but I can't remember if it triggers a problem with bookmarks or not.
Quote:
What I have discovered so far:

- My Kobo has indeed deleted all annotations for the book from the Bookmark table of KoboReader.sqlite.
- When I load them back on (full SD restore from most recent backup) they just disappear again.
- Most recent backup has no annotations in Digital Editions file for that book, even though annotations are in SQLite database.
- Second-to-last backup has annotations in a Digital Editions file as well as database.
- Comparing the most recent annotation from second-to-last backup with the same annotation from latest backup, I noticed that the ContentID field is blank in most recent backup. Everything else, for annotations that are in both backups (id, etc) seem to be identical.
- When I insert a ContentID matching older backup, Kobo still throws them all out.
All that suggests that the device updated the firmware to 4.15.12920 between the good backup and when you noticed the problem.
Quote:
Maybe the Digital Editions folder is somehow pulling rank over data in the Bookmark table of the SQLite DB?
The "Digital Editions" folder does pull rank over the table, but, not in this way. When you reopen the book, the file and database are merged. Unfortunately, the location details are updated in a way that means that which chapter the annotation is in, and the percent progress through the book is lost. The chapter will always show as the chapter you reopen the book at, and the percent will always be zero. This is a very long standing bug.

There is a simple workaround for this. In the "Digital Editions" folder, remove the "annotations" directory and replace it with a file. The device will no longer be able to create the annot files and the merge errors when opening the book will not happen. I do this on the device I do most annotations on, and have never noticed a problem.
Quote:
Does anyone have tips on how to get Kobo to accept my backed up annotations for the book, rather than deleting them?
Basically what you have done is what I would have suggested. But, I would have missed the need to fix the ContentID as it was only when I tried to work out why you did it, that I realised what the original cause probably was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pl8o View Post
When I clicked annotations from the home screen, they showed up, but when I clicked "Show in Book", it would show a white screen and the book would close / crash. They didn’t show up in the book when I paged through, though, and after paging through they would disappear from the annotations view.

I repeated the process, this time deleting the Digital Editions folder for the author of the book. It had the same issue with "Show in Book", at first: returning a blank screen and crashing. But when I flip through, they’re there. And now, "show in book" seems to be working too!
I think most of that is related to the issues when merging the annot file with the bookmark. This would probably have messed up the ContentID for the books that were missing them. A crash when trying to go to an annotation usually means that the book has change in some way and the annotation points to a location that doesn't exist. It is possible the change you made set things up incorrectly. But, the annotations get rewritten during the reading session and that probably set the correct values. Also, I think I would have used the ContentId for the first ToC entry in the book. That might have avoided some of these issues, but I am not sure.

And congratulations on recovering from this. Hopefully Kobo will fix this in the next firmware update so that it doesn't continue to affect things.
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