Thread: Calibre error, cannot communicate with Kobo
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Old 06-21-2021, 08:50 PM   #4
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 Joliet Jake View Post
I didn't know how to do that. It's a bit late, but not terrible. I had backed up the books about a week ago by manually coping them from the Kobo to a directory on my computer. I would still like to know how to do that with Kobo: I had effectively been using Calibre *as* the backup.

Do you mean log in while connected to Kobo Desktop?
We are not talking about the books. The Kobo devices use a database of the details in the book. When you add a book to the device, it extracts details of the book and put them in the database. When you are using the devices UI, the information displayed is from the database. The database also contains the collections, reading status and any annotations you make.

When calibre sees a Kobo device, it reads the database to get the list of books on the device. Unfortunately, the database can get corrupted and you will see an error like this. The fix for this is to sign out of the Kobo account on the device, and then sign in again. That will build a new database of the books on the device. But, you will lose the reading status, collections and annotations. If you take a backup of the database, it can be restored and you will only lose the changes made since the last backup. As you are a calibre user, you can automate the backup using my Kobo Utilities. That can be set to make a backup of the database each time the device is connected.

Unfortunately, the database can become corrupted. One way is to not safely eject the device from the PC. Depending on what is happening, this can lead to a corrupt database. There are almost definitely other ways for the database corruption to happen, but, I do not know what they are.
Quote:
So I tried that. I logged into Desktop, connected the Kobo, synced it, logged out. I'm still getting the same error. Also very few books disappeared.
Did you connect the device while using the Kobo desktop application? If so, I would have expected an error or a prompt to do the setup. That would rebuild the database.
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