What About Extra Titles?

abrogard · 03-29-2021, 05:03 AM

I don't understand 'extra titles' when found in a library maintenance check.

They are, it says, books found in the library which have no corresponding entry in the database.

That seems clear enough. There's a book that Calibre has copied into it's own folder but it hasn't listed it in the database. The database would be the index of all titles in the library I guess.

Well okay. But why? And why not enter them now in the database?

And what am I supposed to do about it? Apparently all I can do is delete them. But why would I want to delete them? Wouldn't I want them kept and listed in the database?

Or is it trying to say they are 'duplicated' books? extra copies?

That doesn't seem to be right. I just checked a couple of them. I searched the library for them and it said they didn't exist. So I take it the search was on the database and that's why it came back zero.

But the 'maintenance' thing is telling me it is there in fact.

If they were duplicated then of course I'd want to delete them. Why'd it ever put them there? But it looks like they're not.

But if they are not and I now delete them then what a hell of a job (there's hundreds) going all over the multiple hard drive and folders looking for these (now) missing books.

wouldn't it make more sense for the system to simply record their presence? Put an entry in the database? Why can't it/doesn't it do that?

Have I misunderstood the whole thing? What to do?

ownedbycats · 03-29-2021, 05:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abrogard

And what am I supposed to do about it? Apparently all I can do is delete them. But why would I want to delete them? Wouldn't I want them kept and listed in the database?

I also found it strange there isn't an option to re-add to the library. The one time it happened to me (I botched up a bulk metadata edit and had to restore a day-old database backup), i just physically moved the book folder out and re-added it normally.

theducks · 03-29-2021, 12:07 PM

I agree with Owned that it would be nice if...

Since Kovid did not offer this, I will =assume= there are good reasons:

I would guess that the normal ADD pipeline process would be defeated .

Think about the WHY (way to avoid if there is a button to just click):
a) Is this a rename that went bad (crashed/power/drive fail)
b) caused by using on a Network drive/NAS.
c) using the OS explorer inside the Library folder to add/rename book

OP The normal way is to MOVE ONLY those (this is the one time you need to use the OS) to a temp location. run maintenance again until you get a clean slate.

Then add those saved the normal way

abrogard · 03-29-2021, 03:50 PM

you mean go into calibre's own directory tree and move those files out? How to identify them - are they in a subfolder there or something? In my case I'm looking at hundreds from amongst thousands.

theducks · 03-29-2021, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abrogard

you mean go into calibre's own directory tree and move those files out? How to identify them - are they in a subfolder there or something? In my case I'm looking at hundreds from amongst thousands.

Yes, this is one of the few TIME you need to do that.
When you run the tool, you get a chance to: "copy to clipboard"

Paste that into a new Notepad (TXT) file (and save it as you have a massive amount of cleanup and will not be able to do in one session)

Another way:
Create a NEW empty Library: Switch/Create: NEW and Tick Copy Structure....
Then switch back to the OLD: Select all: Right click:Copy to Library:<the new one> DELETE AFTER COPY

What is left, is those that calibre did not know about.

FIND OUT HOW YOU GOT THIS BAD and stop doing that

chaley · 03-29-2021, 04:51 PM

Elaborating on theduck's answer because I had written most of it before I noticed that he posted: one way to do it is to create new library and move all the books to it. The books left behind are the ones that calibre doesn't know about. You do what you will with those books. You do this with calibre's "Copy to library - delete after copy". The steps:

Stop calibre
If your library is on a network folder, a NAS, or in some shared folder like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive then move it out. My guess is that one of the above is true, which explains why your library is borked. For more info see this FAQ.
Start calibre. If necessary switch to the problematic library.
Ensure that the Copy to library is available somewhere: on the toolbar, the context menu, or a menu.
Create a new library somewhere with Library / Switch/create library / Create an empty library. Check the box "Copy structure ...". Make sure that "somewhere" is *not* on a NAS or cloud folder.
Switch back to the old library and select all the books in that library
Use Copy to library. Select the new library with (Delete after copy)
Let it run.
When it finishes calibre will think that the the current (original) library is empty. Exit calibre.
Look through the original library's folders and clean up stuff.
Start calibre and switch to the new library.
Add the orphan books from the original library's folder with calibre's "Add books / Add from folders and subfolders". Say "Yes" when it asks if all formats in a folder are the same book. You probably want to look at the options in Preferences / Adding books / Adding actions tab before doing the Add.

abrogard · 03-29-2021, 05:09 PM

Thanks, both, for all that good advice/clear direction. I'll do the copy to library would be the thing I think.

How'd I get here? It is virtually a new library. It had been sitting on this machine for yonks with nearly nothing in it. I started using this machine and decided to start again building that library. So I did a couple of disks ( 6 hard drives on this machine ) and then thought I ought to get the library off C: which was getting full.

So I moved the library, using Calibre's option, over to where it is now (J

and continued the job.

Got to the end, sort of, decided to check the thing and came up with all this.

That's all I know.

p.s. 'select all the books in the library' for 'copy to library' - I see no option to select all books - that will come up when I select 'copy to library' will it?

I'm going to have to put this on hold. I don't have enough disk space to create another library of this size. Better get another disk.

theducks · 03-29-2021, 05:47 PM

Ctrl-A is the standard UI just about everywhere for select all.
It works in Calibre as well

click the titlebar right above the row numbers (unlabled column head)

abrogard · 03-29-2021, 07:55 PM

Yep, okay found that. Just before I got a disk crash. Switched off and when I came back and switched on again I get the dreaded ms message NTLDR is missing...

So off I go again on another tedious and annoying 'fix windows' thing.

See you when i get back.

Sirtel · 03-29-2021, 08:19 PM

Perhaps you should find out why you have those constant disk crashes. That's certainly not normal. I've never had a disk crash in all my years of using Windows.

ownedbycats · 03-29-2021, 08:41 PM

Unless your hard drive is making angry noises, I recommend running HDDScan. It also checks SSDs.

theducks · 03-29-2021, 10:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Perhaps you should find out why you have those constant disk crashes. That's certainly not normal. I've never had a disk crash in all my years of using Windows.

I wish I could say that.
My most spectacular one was a 5.25 in a USB housing. One day it it just started spinning up faster and faster. The USB case was vibrating around on my desk before I found the AC cord. Total loss of speed control.

A bad PSU (noisy power) will cause issues. I have had a Year old drive just stop reading (it was spinning quietly), Maxtor gave me a free drive of a larger size as they no longer made that 850MB

abrogard · 03-30-2021, 12:36 AM

I'm back. It was only a screwed up boot order thing. Probably happened when I hung a Unix Mint off the thing to see if it would boot (it wouldn't). By some magic it changed the boot order though.

When I say 'disk crash' I use the term loosely. As often as not - more often than not - they're OS crashes. And I've had a swag of them.

My setup perhaps isn't identical with yours, Sirtel (are you really in Estonia? I've always thought it must be a superb place and longed to go there. Probably never, ever will, though)

I run the family's machines: five in use daily and a couple of spares - 7 machines - and sometimes that unix mint machine, too.

Two members plod along month after month with never a problem. Mum on win7 and youngest son on win10. Mum does nothing but watch youtube things and email, youngest does nothing but computer games like Minecraft.

But eldest son and myself - OS and disk crashes are nothing new. I see now he's put his machine in the corner of his room - it must have died again. Last time it died that's what he did - too sick of it all to bother telling me about it and asking for help.

He plays far more games, is continually downloading installing and running new ones. He gets about a bit. That could maybe be it.

I get about heaps. And have an enormous (well I think it's enormous, how to quickly find the count?) swag of installed apps and I'm continuously finding I have to download/install something more. So that could maybe be it for me.

But win security is pretty good nowadays so I doubt virus attack. More likely to be simply incompatible software or poorly behaved software, I think.

And doubtless we've made blunders from ignorance. Like early days 'no NTLdr' messages would have driven us to googling for help and we'd finish up doing all kinds of things starting with MS trouble shooting which for this is totally useless of course and soon drives you to doing a reinstall.

And web pages by well meaning people have us doing all sorts of other things that miss the point, too.

What I'm saying is that not a few of our 'crashes' maybe should not have been crashes at all but were mere glitches we handled badly.

Because the alternative seems to be that both he and I have 'bad' machines, wicked nasty little brutes that won't cooperate. And I think that may just not be right.

Anyway.. back to my library hassles. I'll get with it this evening..

ownedbycats · 03-30-2021, 12:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abrogard

I'm back. It was only a screwed up boot order thing. Probably happened when I hung a Unix Mint off the thing to see if it would boot (it wouldn't). By some magic it changed the boot order though.

My old computer I had set the BIOs to boot from a CD first. Unfortunately it couldn't handle non-boot CDs very well so whenever I accidentally left a disc in the drive I got errors.

abrogard · 03-30-2021, 01:13 AM

Yep, that'd do it. I've got no cd drives though. Well I do. I have a 'free floating' one that I plug in when I really must have one. How did you get 9.7 million karma if it comes in units of 10 ( I assume because that's where I'm at ).

Does it go exponential or you've just 970,000 promotes or there's different 'awards' for different things?

Later update :

Well that's wonderful. Job done. New library and maintenance checks database against files and finds no errors.

It imported nearly 5000 from those 'leftovers' in the old one. About 1500 were duplicates that we didn't import and I know that amongst those I did import there's many 'books' are not really books at all. Principally a manual of building codes of some 1000 pages, each one a pdf that Calibre naturally thinks is a document. So it calls that 1000 books.

That's the next project inline. To compile that down to one doc. One book.

Thanks everyone for showing me how to use Calibre to deal with this kind of thing.

03-29-2021, 05:03 AM	#1
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	What About Extra Titles? I don't understand 'extra titles' when found in a library maintenance check. They are, it says, books found in the library which have no corresponding entry in the database. That seems clear enough. There's a book that Calibre has copied into it's own folder but it hasn't listed it in the database. The database would be the index of all titles in the library I guess. Well okay. But why? And why not enter them now in the database? And what am I supposed to do about it? Apparently all I can do is delete them. But why would I want to delete them? Wouldn't I want them kept and listed in the database? Or is it trying to say they are 'duplicated' books? extra copies? That doesn't seem to be right. I just checked a couple of them. I searched the library for them and it said they didn't exist. So I take it the search was on the database and that's why it came back zero. But the 'maintenance' thing is telling me it is there in fact. If they were duplicated then of course I'd want to delete them. Why'd it ever put them there? But it looks like they're not. But if they are not and I now delete them then what a hell of a job (there's hundreds) going all over the multiple hard drive and folders looking for these (now) missing books. wouldn't it make more sense for the system to simply record their presence? Put an entry in the database? Why can't it/doesn't it do that? Have I misunderstood the whole thing? What to do? Last edited by abrogard; 03-29-2021 at 05:09 AM.

03-29-2021, 04:51 PM	#6
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,313 Karma: 7957679 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	Elaborating on theduck's answer because I had written most of it before I noticed that he posted: one way to do it is to create new library and move all the books to it. The books left behind are the ones that calibre doesn't know about. You do what you will with those books. You do this with calibre's "Copy to library - delete after copy". The steps: Stop calibre If your library is on a network folder, a NAS, or in some shared folder like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive then move it out. My guess is that one of the above is true, which explains why your library is borked. For more info see this FAQ. Start calibre. If necessary switch to the problematic library. Ensure that the Copy to library is available somewhere: on the toolbar, the context menu, or a menu. Create a new library somewhere with Library / Switch/create library / Create an empty library. Check the box "Copy structure ...". Make sure that "somewhere" is not on a NAS or cloud folder. Switch back to the old library and select all the books in that library Use Copy to library. Select the new library with (Delete after copy) Let it run. When it finishes calibre will think that the the current (original) library is empty. Exit calibre. Look through the original library's folders and clean up stuff. Start calibre and switch to the new library. Add the orphan books from the original library's folder with calibre's "Add books / Add from folders and subfolders". Say "Yes" when it asks if all formats in a folder are the same book. You probably want to look at the options in Preferences / Adding books / Adding actions tab before doing the Add.

03-29-2021, 05:09 PM	#7
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	Thanks, both, for all that good advice/clear direction. I'll do the copy to library would be the thing I think. How'd I get here? It is virtually a new library. It had been sitting on this machine for yonks with nearly nothing in it. I started using this machine and decided to start again building that library. So I did a couple of disks ( 6 hard drives on this machine ) and then thought I ought to get the library off C: which was getting full. So I moved the library, using Calibre's option, over to where it is now (J and continued the job. Got to the end, sort of, decided to check the thing and came up with all this. That's all I know. p.s. 'select all the books in the library' for 'copy to library' - I see no option to select all books - that will come up when I select 'copy to library' will it? I'm going to have to put this on hold. I don't have enough disk space to create another library of this size. Better get another disk. Last edited by abrogard; 03-29-2021 at 05:26 PM.

03-30-2021, 01:13 AM	#15
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	Yep, that'd do it. I've got no cd drives though. Well I do. I have a 'free floating' one that I plug in when I really must have one. How did you get 9.7 million karma if it comes in units of 10 ( I assume because that's where I'm at ). Does it go exponential or you've just 970,000 promotes or there's different 'awards' for different things? Later update : Well that's wonderful. Job done. New library and maintenance checks database against files and finds no errors. It imported nearly 5000 from those 'leftovers' in the old one. About 1500 were duplicates that we didn't import and I know that amongst those I did import there's many 'books' are not really books at all. Principally a manual of building codes of some 1000 pages, each one a pdf that Calibre naturally thinks is a document. So it calls that 1000 books. That's the next project inline. To compile that down to one doc. One book. Thanks everyone for showing me how to use Calibre to deal with this kind of thing. Last edited by abrogard; 03-30-2021 at 03:59 AM.

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03-29-2021, 12:07 PM	#3
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 30,876 Karma: 59840450 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	I agree with Owned that it would be nice if... Since Kovid did not offer this, I will =assume= there are good reasons: I would guess that the normal ADD pipeline process would be defeated . Think about the WHY (way to avoid if there is a button to just click): a) Is this a rename that went bad (crashed/power/drive fail) b) caused by using on a Network drive/NAS. c) using the OS explorer inside the Library folder to add/rename book OP The normal way is to MOVE ONLY those (this is the one time you need to use the OS) to a temp location. run maintenance again until you get a clean slate. Then add those saved the normal way

03-29-2021, 03:50 PM	#4
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	you mean go into calibre's own directory tree and move those files out? How to identify them - are they in a subfolder there or something? In my case I'm looking at hundreds from amongst thousands.

03-29-2021, 05:47 PM	#8
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 30,876 Karma: 59840450 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Ctrl-A is the standard UI just about everywhere for select all. It works in Calibre as well click the titlebar right above the row numbers (unlabled column head)

03-29-2021, 07:55 PM	#9
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	Yep, okay found that. Just before I got a disk crash. Switched off and when I came back and switched on again I get the dreaded ms message NTLDR is missing... So off I go again on another tedious and annoying 'fix windows' thing. See you when i get back.

03-29-2021, 08:19 PM	#10
Sirtel Grand Sorcerer Posts: 13,050 Karma: 237059052 Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Estonia Device: Kobo Sage & Libra 2	Perhaps you should find out why you have those constant disk crashes. That's certainly not normal. I've never had a disk crash in all my years of using Windows.

03-29-2021, 08:41 PM	#11
ownedbycats Custom User Title Posts: 10,583 Karma: 74000001 Join Date: Oct 2018 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Libra H2O, formerly Aura HD	Unless your hard drive is making angry noises, I recommend running HDDScan. It also checks SSDs.

03-30-2021, 12:36 AM	#13
abrogard Groupie Posts: 168 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2017 Device: kindle	I'm back. It was only a screwed up boot order thing. Probably happened when I hung a Unix Mint off the thing to see if it would boot (it wouldn't). By some magic it changed the boot order though. When I say 'disk crash' I use the term loosely. As often as not - more often than not - they're OS crashes. And I've had a swag of them. My setup perhaps isn't identical with yours, Sirtel (are you really in Estonia? I've always thought it must be a superb place and longed to go there. Probably never, ever will, though) I run the family's machines: five in use daily and a couple of spares - 7 machines - and sometimes that unix mint machine, too. Two members plod along month after month with never a problem. Mum on win7 and youngest son on win10. Mum does nothing but watch youtube things and email, youngest does nothing but computer games like Minecraft. But eldest son and myself - OS and disk crashes are nothing new. I see now he's put his machine in the corner of his room - it must have died again. Last time it died that's what he did - too sick of it all to bother telling me about it and asking for help. He plays far more games, is continually downloading installing and running new ones. He gets about a bit. That could maybe be it. I get about heaps. And have an enormous (well I think it's enormous, how to quickly find the count?) swag of installed apps and I'm continuously finding I have to download/install something more. So that could maybe be it for me. But win security is pretty good nowadays so I doubt virus attack. More likely to be simply incompatible software or poorly behaved software, I think. And doubtless we've made blunders from ignorance. Like early days 'no NTLdr' messages would have driven us to googling for help and we'd finish up doing all kinds of things starting with MS trouble shooting which for this is totally useless of course and soon drives you to doing a reinstall. And web pages by well meaning people have us doing all sorts of other things that miss the point, too. What I'm saying is that not a few of our 'crashes' maybe should not have been crashes at all but were mere glitches we handled badly. Because the alternative seems to be that both he and I have 'bad' machines, wicked nasty little brutes that won't cooperate. And I think that may just not be right. Anyway.. back to my library hassles. I'll get with it this evening..

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