Calibre for Mac not downloading metadata and freezing

[elligator]

Hello,

I use Calibre on Mac OX 10.6. I hadn't updated it in awhile (I was using the version from maybe 3 or 4 updates ago?) and noticed a week or so ago that it flat out stopped downloading metadata and covers. It says "working" and never finishing searching. It previously worked great! I thought that updating it would solve the problem, and I still have the same issues.

Also, in an effort to see if downloading from different sites worked, I tried to install the Goodreads and Barnes and Noble plugins. When I try to add a new plugin, Calibre freezes completely and I have to force quit.

Like I said, this problem just started so I don't think it could be an issue with firewalls or my router. Any other ideas? Thanks for the help.

[chrisparker]

I would update to the latest version (0.9.27 as I type) and see if the problem goes away.

[theducks]

There were recent changes due to metadata source site updates. Older versions don't work with the newer site format.

That does not explain why you are not getting the reported: 'No Results' that those site changes caused. OR why you are not timing out? Did you mess with the (get metadata) timeout setting.

[elligator]

I did download the new version - no help.


I didn't change any settings. Like I said, it just up and stopped working one day. However, I tried it a few days ago on my university's internet and it works. Weird, because we have logins and proxies and all sorts of things on the University internet, and nothing at home. Hmmm... I am baffled?

[elligator]

Ok, I got the newest-newest version just now, and now I actually get an error message. I did read the error but I don't think that "no matches found" should be correct. I've search tons of books, even down to extremely simple and popular titles and I still get 0 results every time. Before this problem started, I got great results on everything.



calibre, version 0.9.29
ERROR: No matches found: <p>Failed to find any books that match your search. Try making the search <b>less specific</b>. For example, use only the author's last name and a single distinctive word from the title.<p>To see the full log, click Show Details.

Running identify query with parameters:
{u'authors': [u'Eben Alexander, M. D.'], u'identifiers': {u'amazon': u'1451695195', u'google': u'-1lTvZ87asMC', u'isbn': u'9781451695199', u'barnesnoble': u'w/proof-of-heaven-eben-alexander-iii/1112409984', u'goodreads': u'15851746'}, u'timeout': 30, u'title': u"Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife"}
Using plugins: Google, Amazon.com
The log from individual plugins is below

****************************** Google ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1')]
Found 0 results
Downloading from Google took 120.11384511
Failed to make identify query: u'http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=isbn%3A9781451695199&max-results=20&min-viewability=none&start-index=1'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/ebooks/metadata/sources/google.py", line 303, in identify
File "site-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", line 199, in open_novisit
File "site-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", line 230, in _mech_open
File "site-packages/mechanize/_opener.py", line 193, in open
File "site-packages/mechanize/_urllib2_fork.py", line 344, in _open
File "site-packages/mechanize/_urllib2_fork.py", line 332, in _call_chain
File "site-packages/mechanize/_urllib2_fork.py", line 1142, in http_open
File "site-packages/mechanize/_urllib2_fork.py", line 1118, in do_open
URLError: <urlopen error timed out>

************************************************** ******************************

****************************** Amazon.com ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)')]
Found 0 results
Downloading from Amazon.com took 120.125457048
Amazon timed out. Try again later.

************************************************** ******************************
The identify phase took 120.19 seconds
The longest time (120.125457) was taken by: Amazon.com
Merging results from different sources and finding earliest publication dates from the worldcat.org service
We have 0 merged results, merging took: 0.00 seconds

[kovidgoyal]

See this line in the log

URLError: <urlopen error timed out>

That means something on your network or your computer is blocking calibre. Most likely some kind of firewall/security software/proxy, you will need to figure out what that is.

[elligator]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

See this line in the log

URLError: <urlopen error timed out>

That means something on your network or your computer is blocking calibre. Most likely some kind of firewall/security software/proxy, you will need to figure out what that is.

Thanks very much for your help! Makes sense, but I don't have any firewall or proxy on my internet at home (where it doesn't work). I do have a proxy on my internet at my University (where it does work). Is it possible that Calibre is storing the proxy information and trying to log in to the proxy server while I'm at home also? Is there a way to "clear it" or something?

[BetterRed]

Is there anything in Preferences->Miscellaneous - see attachment

Also see http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....-my-http-proxy

BR

[elligator]

Yes that's exactly what the problem is! Thanks so much. It is using the proxy settings from my university... not so great at home...

I don't want to remove it from Firefox and Safari because it would be annoying to have to put all of the information in again tomorrow when I get to my office. Is there any way to manually remove it from Calibre?

[kovidgoyal]

calibre uses your system proxy settings, whatever they are.

[elligator]

What about the environmental variable where you can specify a proxy? Is there a way to specify to not use a proxy?

If not, where is it drawing the proxy settings from? Safari?

Thanks for all of the help

[elligator]

I just remembered I did change the actual proxy settings for the whole system awhile ago, and forgot. Fixed! Fantastic. Thanks everyone!

But, there is no way to make Calibre ignore the system settings? Ideally I don't want to have to turn the proxy settings on in the morning at my office, and off when I get home every day...

[BetterRed]

Its in your network settings - this is for Leopard, hopefully it wouldn't have changed much - http://www.artica.fr/download/Proxy_...SX_Leopard.pdf

BR

[elligator]

Yes I do know how to change that, so I did it already and it fixed the issue with Calibre. It will download metadata and covers now. I was just wondeting if there is a way to get Calibre to ignore what my system proxy settings are, so I can leave those settings alone? Otherwise I will need to turn them on in the morning and off in the afternoon every day....

[chaley]

Originally Posted by elligator

Yes I do know how to change that, so I did it already and it fixed the issue with Calibre. It will download metadata and covers now. I was just wondeting if there is a way to get Calibre to ignore what my system proxy settings are, so I can leave those settings alone? Otherwise I will need to turn them on in the morning and off in the afternoon every day....

Try setting the http_proxy environment variable mentioned in the calibre documentation http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cust...ment-variables, however you do that on your system.