Clara HD Error Communicating With Device

[PixieDinoGirl]

My Kobo Clara will no longer connect to Calibre. Everytime I connect I get the "Error communicating with device" message.
I have tried Signing Out of my Kobo account, Repairing my Kobo account and I've also now factory reset my Kobo.
None of these have helped.
Is there anything else I can try?

[davidfor]

You need to press the details button in the error message dialog and see the full details of the problem. It will probably be a long message telling you that your version of calibre does not support the firmware version on your Kobo device. With instructions about upgrading calibre or how to workaround the issue.

Otherwise it is a real error. And if we know the details, we might be able to solve the problem.

[PixieDinoGirl]

Here is the error message -

calibre, version 4.22.0
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

SQLError: near "Teen": syntax error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 90, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 543, in _sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 970, in sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2558, in update_device_database_collections
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2924, in delete_empty_bookshelves
File "c:\t\t\apsw-47cp24d7\src\cursor.c", line 1019, in APSWCursor_execute.sqlite3_prepare
File "c:\t\t\apsw-47cp24d7\src\statementcache.c", line 386, in sqlite3_prepare
SQLError: SQLError: near "Teen": syntax error

[PixieDinoGirl]

Nevermind. It might be working again. I've removed all my settings (on just about everything) and now it's connecting.
I'll add each setting back in one by one to find out where the problem was.

Thanks for the help. I think I just needed to see that the error message wasn't as long as it looked in the tiny box.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by PixieDinoGirl

Here is the error message -

calibre, version 4.22.0
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

SQLError: near "Teen": syntax error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 90, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 543, in _sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 970, in sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2558, in update_device_database_collections
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2924, in delete_empty_bookshelves
File "c:\t\t\apsw-47cp24d7\src\cursor.c", line 1019, in APSWCursor_execute.sqlite3_prepare
File "c:\t\t\apsw-47cp24d7\src\statementcache.c", line 386, in sqlite3_prepare
SQLError: SQLError: near "Teen": syntax error

That was not what I was expecting. And very embarrassing that I let Little Bobby Tables visit. I'm not sanitising the input. Which deserves a lot of and . I'll fix it for the next calibre release.

But, can you tell me what you had in the driver configuration. The place the error is happening is because of the value in "Ignore collections" field. That is part of the "Collections" section on the second tab of the KoboTouch driver or KoboTouchExtended driver configuration. I think it is something with at least one single quote and the word "Teen".


And most calibre error messages show brief description but pressing the "Details" button it shows more details. Sometimes it is a text description, which is what I was expecting. You will see that for "expected" errors. Other times it is a stack dump like this that can tell a developer where the error occurred. I just had to read the code to see what stupid thing I had done.

[Quoth]

It's his mother and sister Elaine that are real trouble.

[PixieDinoGirl]

I get the error every time I tick 'delete empty collections'.
I can have the kobo with no books on and if that box is ticked it will not send metadata. Untick it and it sends.
Now it's unticked and working fine.
I mainly have fanfiction on my kobo so FanFicFare had made collections for all the tags. I can't remember exactly what I was trying to exclude but I know that wasn't it so not sure why it brought that up as the error.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by PixieDinoGirl

I get the error every time I tick 'delete empty collections'.
I can have the kobo with no books on and if that box is ticked it will not send metadata. Untick it and it sends.
Now it's unticked and working fine.
I mainly have fanfiction on my kobo so FanFicFare had made collections for all the tags. I can't remember exactly what I was trying to exclude but I know that wasn't it so not sure why it brought that up as the error.

Unticking the delete collections option would get around the problem. The failure is in that code to do this. But, it should only have triggered a problem when there was something in the "Ignore collections" of the driver. From the error, it had to have "Teen" in it. And probably had a single quote. But, there might have been some other unexpected and unhandled character.

In any case, I have already fixed the code and will be checking it in for the next calibre release when I have done a little more testing. And rechecked I haven't done something like this elsewhere.

[DNSB]

Ah, yes. Fond memories of little Bobby Tables.

[PixieDinoGirl]

I think I've found it. I have a lone tag which is - ':teen:' - (no idea why) and that must be what was throwing the error up. I just copied a list of them last night and wasn't really paying attention.
I'm now redoing all my collections anyway so it shouldn't happen again.
Thanks for the help. I've actually learnt a bit more about code while looking in to this today.

[codychan]

I don't know if there is something wrong with two recent released firmwares, my Kobo Forma goes wrong from time to time since the firmware 4.23.15505, such as

1. highlight some sentences when reading, but the highlights parts are not shown in the highlight collection list on the right bottom corner of the screen
2. the database got corrupted, it has been corrupted twice since I installed 4.23.15505, I have to restore it from the backup database file made by Calibre
3. the Send to device function in Calibre doesn't work from time to time, sometimes one book or two are not sent to the device, sometime it works when I tried it again
4. The reading position is not synced into Calibre, and the reading position restore to the old position in the book after I unplugged.
5. Start reading a book in the readling list but not on the home page(only 4 books are listed on the home page), goto home page, the new book is not pushed onto the home page.

Calibre + Kobo rarely went wrong in the past, but recently weird issues happen multiple times.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by codychan

I don't know if there is something wrong with two recent released firmwares, my Kobo Forma goes wrong from time to time since the firmware 4.23.15505, such as

1. highlight some sentences when reading, but the highlights parts are not shown in the highlight collection list on the right color of the screen

There is a filter to control what is shown in the annotations list. Is this set to "All?

2. the database got corrupted, it has been corrupted twice since I installed 4.23.15505, I have to restore it from the backup database file made by Calibre
3. the Send to device function in Calibre doesn't work from time to time, sometimes one book or two are not sent to the device, sometime it works when I tried it again

If you are using the KoboTouchExtended driver, if the changes to make an epub a kepub fail, it can silently not send books. That depends on the options chosen. Calibre should always send a book if there is a suitable format. And if there isn't it should do a conversion, or tell you.

But, how do you know the book wasn't sent? Did you look in the file system on the device? Or did it not appear in the book list? If he latter, did the device show the importing screen after you ejected the device? If it did, and the book wasn't shown, it generally means there was a problem with the book so that the device could not import it. And this will mean other books in the same batch won't be imported.

Those are the things I can think of. If calibre isn't actually putting the book on the device, I would need to see a debug log from calibre when it happens to try and work out what was wrong.

4. The reading position is not synced into Calibre, and the reading position restore to the old position in the book after I unplugged.

The latter is usually a sign that the database is corrupt. The status isn't successfully written to the database, and then when it is read again, the last successfully written position us found. But, there is something different in how or when the reading position is stored, that might mean it might not be seen when connecting to calibre. I don't have a good idea of what has changed, just that something has changed.

The reading position not being retrieved can also be caused by the file "driveinfo.calibre" being regenerated (by being deleted or a factory reset). If you have a profile for your device configured in the Kobo Utilities plugin, this is identified by the contents of the "driveinfo.calibre" file. If that get regenerated, then the plugin does not know it is the same device. If you only have one Kobo device, using "* Any device" for the configuration is generally better. Or if you don't want to differentiate between the devices. Otherwise, you need to add the device again in the Device tab of the configuration.

[codychan]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There is a filter to control what is shown in the annotations list. Is this set to "All?

Of curse, it is always `All`, and I tried all options in it, the list is always 22 pages, but it should be more such as 25 pages since I added more highlights. And I have used Kobo device for several years, this is not the mistake I would make.

Originally Posted by davidfor

If you are using the KoboTouchExtended driver, if the changes to make an epub a kepub fail, it can silently not send books. That depends on the options chosen. Calibre should always send a book if there is a suitable format. And if there isn't it should do a conversion, or tell you.

But, how do you know the book wasn't sent? Did you look in the file system on the device? Or did it not appear in the book list? If he latter, did the device show the importing screen after you ejected the device? If it did, and the book wasn't shown, it generally means there was a problem with the book so that the device could not import it. And this will mean other books in the same batch won't be imported.

I didn't fail to convert the awz3/mobi/epub to kepub, failed-to-convert issue happened to me before, but not this time. It just shows it sents successfully but actually it didn't, and sometimes I have to reboot my Kobo, sometimes I have to redo the Send to device. I didn't notice the `importing screen`(not sure it shows it not or) and this is not an one-time issue, it happened several times.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Those are the things I can think of. If calibre isn't actually putting the book on the device, I would need to see a debug log from calibre when it happens to try and work out what was wrong.

The latter is usually a sign that the database is corrupt. The status isn't successfully written to the database, and then when it is read again, the last successfully written position us found. But, there is something different in how or when the reading position is stored, that might mean it might not be seen when connecting to calibre. I don't have a good idea of what has changed, just that something has changed.

The reading position not being retrieved can also be caused by the file "driveinfo.calibre" being regenerated (by being deleted or a factory reset). If you have a profile for your device configured in the Kobo Utilities plugin, this is identified by the contents of the "driveinfo.calibre" file. If that get regenerated, then the plugin does not know it is the same device. If you only have one Kobo device, using "* Any device" for the configuration is generally better. Or if you don't want to differentiate between the devices. Otherwise, you need to add the device again in the Device tab of the configuration.

I didn't change my Windows OS, I didn't change the Calibre(maybe upgrade some kobo plugins), I didn't change my Kobo device(just upgrade the firmware and install the patch), and a few weeks ago, It failed to upgrade the Calibre program to the latest version, I tried many times, it rollbacked at the end of the installation. I uninstalled the old version of Calibre and installed it again, it successfully installed it. (I have been using Calibre for several years, this is the first time that the new version of Calibre failed to install.)

Kobo and Calibre work without problem recently. I'll update this if it happens.

[davidfor]

@codychan: Has this problem been solved? You don't actually say.