calibre dies after a few days in whs

[mobelby]

Hi,

Not sure whether to raise this as a ticket.
Every version of calibre I've used (and installed as a service on windows home server) up to version 6.17 has crashed within a few days of starting the program.

Is there something that I should be aware of that can keep the service running (so I can access the library from my iphone or another pc)

Thanks

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by mobelby

Not sure whether to raise this as a ticket. Every version of calibre I've used (and installed as a service on windows home server) up to version 6.17 has crashed within a few days of starting the program.

I don't run this myself, but until a permanent solution can be worked out set a cron job to restart this service once a day when you know you'll be sleeping.

This may not be ideal but should keep the service from crashing.

[mobelby]

dwanthy,

Thanks for the suggestion. One question about cron jobs. If I set it daily and it hasn't yet crashed will that mean there will be multiple instances of calibre running or is there away to only start it if it is not already running ?

Thanks - hope this helps others too

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by mobelby

Thanks for the suggestion. One question about cron jobs. If I set it daily and it hasn't yet crashed will that mean there will be multiple instances of calibre running or is there away to only start it if it is not already running ?

A good question.

This is not my area of expertise, I have not done this, but I checked the info in this link and think I could start and stop a task.

It had settings that would allow a task to start every day or every 2nd, or 3rd etc...

There was also an option to end the started task any time up to 72 hours.

I believe this means you could set it to start the task every 2 days at hh:mm and set the task to run for 47 hours and 57 minutes then it would stop the task and start it again 3 minutes later.

What this means is Calibre will be shutdown completely then restarted minutes later.

Again, I don't have experience but I believe my understanding here is correct.

Sorry I couldn't be more help, try using Google for more info on windows cron jobs.

[nharrison66]

Hi Mobleby,
I am curious to know more about your experiences with calibre on WHS.
Like you, i suspect, i was thinking about installing calibre on my WHS and having it run as a service. Only so i can have my scheduled news feeds download & email to my Kindle without having to keep calibre running on a laptop or desktop.
Should i bother trying - in light of your documented experiences?
Cheers
Nick

[toddos]

I ran calibre on my WHS for a while, and now I run just calibre-server there but I do keep my database and books on WHS. One thing I found is that wherever you store the calibre database file (metadata.db) must not be on a duplicated share. If it is and calibre is left running > 24 hours, drive extender will start through file inconsistency errors because it can't get write access to rebalance the file (DE tries to rebalance every hour or so, and will try for 24 hours before it throws errors). Note that this may still be a problem even if you only run calibre-server, since the SQLite library calibre uses has no concept of read-only access (calibre-server should be read-only, but it opens the database for read/write because it can't do it any other way. In theory, calibre-server should not keep the database open for long periods of time, but it's possible that it could).

The easiest solution is to put your calibre library on a non-duplicated share. However I wanted to ensure that my ebooks were duplicated for safety, so I came up with a different solution. WARNING: What I'm about to describe is non-standard, unsupported, and will probably break in future calibre versions (though it's been working for me since late-0.6.x builds up to current). What you need to do is put your database file on a non-duplicated share while you keep your library books themselves on a duplicated share. In my setup, I've created \\server\ebooks as a duplicated share and I keep \\server\software as a non-duplicated share.

• Setup calibre as normal, using \\server\ebooks as your calibre library location (I put mine in \\server\ebooks\calibre, since I use that share for other non-calibre stuff as well)
• Close calibre
• Copy the metadata.db file from that library location to a non-duplicated share
• Create the environment variable CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH and set it to the path where you put metadata.db (in my case, \\server\software\calibre\metadata.db)
• Re-open calibre

Calibre now should point to that database location for its library. Note that doing this will prevent you from using calibre's multiple library feature.

I need to go back and re-evaluate if it's truly necessary to put the database on a non-duplicated share if I'm only running calibre-server 24/7, but I can guarantee that it's required if you want to run the calibre gui 24/7 with the library hosted on a WHS duplicated share (whether you run calibre on the WHS directly or elsewhere, if it's pointint to WHS shares then it will take that write lock and break DE after 24 hours). Unless the SQLite library ever supports a true read-only mode (unlikely) and calibre uses that for everything except for when it needs to write, or calibre switches to a centralized DB model using MySQL or PostgreSQL or similar (even less likely), this is the only solution to keep WHS happy.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by mobelby

Hi,

Not sure whether to raise this as a ticket.
Every version of calibre I've used (and installed as a service on windows home server) up to version 6.17 has crashed within a few days of starting the program.

I notice you said "up to 0.6.17". That version is very old and many things have changed in the interim. You might want to try a newer one (the current version is 0.7.44).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Manichean

I notice you said "up to 0.6.17". That version is very old and many things have changed in the interim. You might want to try a newer one (the current version is 0.7.44).

I hate it when it happens to me, but you got suckered into replying to a post from November 2009, version 0.6.17 might have been a hint.

[Perkin]

@ Manichean, my turn
The date from orig posts are 18 months old.

(I now check date when the version mentioned is more than 10 editions off current version)

Edit: too slow.

[Manichean]

Ah, damn it, never mind me then

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Ah, damn it, never mind me then

Is there a reason that we should not lock these really old (version) posts?

[Manichean]

Yes: It would be a mind-numbing task to do
I see two practicable options:

• We lock old threads when they pop up and split out the new post into its own thread, essentially doing what the user should have done in the first place.
• We lock each thread that goes inactive for X days/weeks/months. This would have to be automated, though- it was the thing that came to mind when I wrote about the mind-numbingness.

[theducks]

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