Can't delete collections that contains books from SD card

[hleo12]

The title says it all.

First of all, I am using the plug-in, and have set it up to automatically create collections based on the series and shelves on my Calibre library. It is also set to delete empty collections.

I understood that it will sometimes make duplicate shelves when syncing because the collections I manually created on my Kobo is synced to Kobo's server.

Well, anyway, my problem is I can't delete any collection that has books from the external sd card. I even have a collection that is listed 4x.

Anybody has an idea on what could be happening?

PS: I tried deleting all my other collections and synced it with Calibre.
It seemed to have fixed the problem, once I synce via wifi, the copies of the collection appear again.

[davidfor]

Firstly, the driver does not create duplicate collections. It checks for the existence of a collection of the name needed before creating. The duplicates come from the Kobo server during a sync. Which is what you see after deleting the collections. The duplicates are actually collections with the same name that were synced and then deleted.

How are you deleting the collections? Deleting a duplicate doesn't work from the device interface. Or at least it didn't the last time I tried. And unless the collection is empty, the calibre driver won't delete it. If you have books on the SD card that are in a collection and remove the card, the driver doesn't consider the collection to be empty. The database on the device still has details of the books, so they will be listed again when the card is reinserted.

You can use my Kobo Utilities plugin to clear up the duplicates. It has a function to do this. It displays the list of collections with the count of duplicates. The options are whether to keep the oldest or newest, and whether to purge the deleted collections. If you don't select the purge, the collections are deleted in a way that at the next sync, the Kobo server should see them and mark them as deleted.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Firstly, the driver does not create duplicate collections. It checks for the existence of a collection of the name needed before creating. The duplicates come from the Kobo server during a sync. Which is what you see after deleting the collections. The duplicates are actually collections with the same name that were synced and then deleted.

How are you deleting the collections? Deleting a duplicate doesn't work from the device interface. Or at least it didn't the last time I tried. And unless the collection is empty, the calibre driver won't delete it. If you have books on the SD card that are in a collection and remove the card, the driver doesn't consider the collection to be empty. The database on the device still has details of the books, so they will be listed again when the card is reinserted.

You can use my Kobo Utilities plugin to clear up the duplicates. It has a function to do this. It displays the list of collections with the count of duplicates. The options are whether to keep the oldest or newest, and whether to purge the deleted collections. If you don't select the purge, the collections are deleted in a way that at the next sync, the Kobo server should see them and mark them as deleted.

The plugin works great, actually.

And sorry if I didn't clear up on how I'm deleting the collections. I'm deleting the collections with just the device itself. So if I have a collection that contains books from the ext sd card, nothing happens when I long press and delete the collection.

It really is inconsistent. I used to make collections on my glo before I discovered the full capabilities of the plugin. So there might be some confusion between the plugin and my glo. I updated my shelves to match my collections. But then again, it only happened with books on the sd card.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by hleo12

The plugin works great, actually.

And sorry if I didn't clear up on how I'm deleting the collections. I'm deleting the collections with just the device itself. So if I have a collection that contains books from the ext sd card, nothing happens when I long press and delete the collection.

It really is inconsistent. I used to make collections on my glo before I discovered the full capabilities of the plugin. So there might be some confusion between the plugin and my glo. I updated my shelves to match my collections. But then again, it only happened with books on the sd card.

I'll have to test that when I get home as I don't have a card with me. But, I am sure I have deleted shelves that had books on the SD card in the past. One thing is that with the duplicate shelves, you usually can't delete them using the device. That's one of the reasons the function was added to the utilities plugin.

[tadpole]

I am trying to be good and research all my question's before posting, but sometimes....correction, a LOT of the time, things go right past me.

I think that I am having some same collection issues. All of my books are on the SD, and I guess the collection's too. I have my kobo utilities set for 'new' collections. Each time that I delete a collection, should I purge it as well, the next time that I connect to Calibre?

Also today, I accidentally deleted a collection of books that I was reading. I reloaded them and now it said that they were DRM....hogwash. I went through some old posts and was told the last time that this happened, it probably means the database on the device is corrupted. And that I should sign out and then sign back in. I did this and it solved the book problem. But now I have many collection's that I had previously deleted. (I had synced with Kobo).

So my next question is, once I get the device the way that I want it with the new collection's, if I sync with Kobo again, will this new set up override what is currently in my “Kobo cloud”?

[davidfor]

When you create a shelf on the device, it is marked as not synced. When you sync to the Kobo server, this is changed. Plus an id is added to help with the syncing. When you delete the shelf, the shelf is marked as deleted, but is still in the database. At the next sync, this is passed to the server and the database row removed. If you sync another device or app, the new shelves are created and the deleted shelves remove. If you do the signout/signin, the server will create these shelves it at whatever was the last sync state.

If you use the shelf management in the KoboTouch driver in calibre, it emulates what happens when you create or delete a shelf. This means that if you let calibre do the shelf management, when you sync to the server, the state of the shelves should be sent correctly.

If you get the duplicated shelves problem, I recommend not using the "Purge duplicate shelves" option when fixing them. If you use this, the shelves are removed completely from the database and a sync will probably bring them back. Without the option, the duplicates are marked as delete and should mark them as deleted on the server during a sync.

[tadpole]

I feel like a third grader sitting in on a college course sometimes if things are not just plain black and white elementary. So sorry for that. But here is the question, can you actually delete a collection with the Kobo Utilities?

I have several collection's that I am trying to delete. (And I have not done a sync with Kobo) I have tried actually deleting them on the device and then connecting to Calibre, then opening the utilities and making sure that the collection does not show and then click the 'OK'. But occasionally they keep returning. I even redid these steps and selected the purge option, yet they are still coming back. Then I tried connecting to Calibre and opening the utilities and then finding the rogue collection. I can highlight it, but can not figure out how to select delete.

I am not sure what it is that I am missing and apologize for being such a pain.

[Ken Maltby]

This sounds, to me, like it might be related to the External uSD Card being mounted as Read-Only. I use Koreader, so it is easy to remount the /mnt/sd as Read-Write, by adding the following to the launching script:

# remount external SD as RW
mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd

Don't know how you would do that for nickel, without a hack/patch, unless you were using Tshering's "Kobo Start Menu".

Luck;
Ken

[PeterT]

But.... collections are stored strictly in the database.... and that is strictly on the internal storage of the device.

Remember IF you use the collection management within calibre (ie setting a value in the device driver's field for bookshelves) then every time you reattach the device to the PC and to calibre, the shelves will be reset to whatever value(s) those columns listed contain.

Once you have started to use calibre to manage shelves, let calibre manage them; don't try to do management from the device itself.

[PeterT]

What I'd advise is to ensure that calibre and it's tags for the collections are correct; do a sync with calibre. If the collections still exist and you feel you need to use the utilities, do, but DON'T select purge. After that, do allow the device to do a sync with the Kobo cloud.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by tadpole

I feel like a third grader sitting in on a college course sometimes if things are not just plain black and white elementary. So sorry for that. But here is the question, can you actually delete a collection with the Kobo Utilities?

I have several collection's that I am trying to delete. (And I have not done a sync with Kobo) I have tried actually deleting them on the device and then connecting to Calibre, then opening the utilities and making sure that the collection does not show and then click the 'OK'. But occasionally they keep returning. I even redid these steps and selected the purge option, yet they are still coming back. Then I tried connecting to Calibre and opening the utilities and then finding the rogue collection. I can highlight it, but can not figure out how to select delete.

I am not sure what it is that I am missing and apologize for being such a pain.

What PeterT said is probably what is happening and what you want. But...

The utilities plugin has no way to create or delete a shelf. It sounds like you are function that is there to clean up duplicate shelves. While this does delete shelves, it only deletes duplicates. That is, if there are two or more shelves with exactly the same name, remove the duplicates so that there is only one shelf of that name. This function was added to clean up after recurring bug in the Kobo servers that will create duplicates during the sync. As far as I can tell, this is not the problem you are having, so that function should not be doing anything for you.

If I am wrong, then I have no idea what you are doing. In that case, can you please provide the full steps of what you are doing? That includes the menu items you are selecting, the titles of the dialogs that are being displayed, what is displayed on the dialog, or a screen shot, and the buttons you are pressing. From that, hopefully it will tell me what you are doing.