Calibre, Kobo, and ePub 3

[PriamX]

I have a few ePub 3 files, they do not have DRM, and they passed the ePub Validator at IDPF.

My device is a Kobo Aura ONE, running 4.9.11211.

My Calibre version is 3.29.

I have the Kobo Utilities plugin v2.6.

Syncing via USB cable.

When I upload the epub 3s to the main memory of the device, is succeeds without any issue. When I show the contents of the device, it lists them in there, however, they have a size of 0MB. (In calibre they are 0.9MB, 1.0MB, and 1.1MB.)

I can read them on the device and in calibre, however, some of the metadata is not transferred over. Specifically, the series and creator metadata.

To see if I can fix this, I run the Kobo Utilities plugin to attempt to update the metadata, it executes, however, the results pop-up list three books as "not on the device". (assuming here this related to the 0MB)

Any ideas? Could this be a bug?

Thanks!

[PriamX]

More on this as I've been trouble-shooting...

Running sqlite3.exe on the KoboReader.sqlite database, it's apparent these books never make it into the kobo database. They end up in the filesystem on the kobo in the correct way, but not in the database.

Any ideas what I could check? Would that be the kobo driver in calibre that's not working right? Or the kobo plugin?

Thanks!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by PriamX

I have a few ePub 3 files, they do not have DRM, and they passed the ePub Validator at IDPF.

My device is a Kobo Aura ONE, running 4.9.11211.

The "2" must be a typo.

My Calibre version is 3.29.

I have the Kobo Utilities plugin v2.6.

Syncing via USB cable.

When I upload the epub 3s to the main memory of the device, is succeeds without any issue. When I show the contents of the device, it lists them in there, however, they have a size of 0MB. (In calibre they are 0.9MB, 1.0MB, and 1.1MB.)

If you are sending the book to the device and then looking at the device list, the book will show and the size will be zero. That is expected. When the device is ejected, it imports the books into the internal database. When you connect again, the size should show correctly.

I can read them on the device and in calibre, however, some of the metadata is not transferred over. Specifically, the series and creator metadata.

The device reads metadata from the book when it is being imported. The creator is usually referred to as the author and should be fetched from the book. But, if there are multiple authors, only the first will be found. It's a deficiency in how the Kobo reads metadata. There is a workaround using a metadata plugboard that works well.

The series info is not read by the device. It is populated directly into the database on the device when it is connected. Any changes in series info are looked for and updates are made. That basically means send the book to the device, disconnect and let the device import the book and then connect again to get the series info updated.

To see if I can fix this, I run the Kobo Utilities plugin to attempt to update the metadata, it executes, however, the results pop-up list three books as "not on the device". (assuming here this related to the 0MB)

When did you do this? If the book hadn't been imported into the internal database, then you will get this error. The plugin is updating the database. It cannot do this until the book has been added to the database.

Originally Posted by PriamX

More on this as I've been trouble-shooting...

Running sqlite3.exe on the KoboReader.sqlite database, it's apparent these books never make it into the kobo database. They end up in the filesystem on the kobo in the correct way, but not in the database.

Again, when did you run this? If the book isn't in the database after ejecting and reinserting, there is a problem. If you haven't ejected the device yet, then it won't be there.

[PriamX]

Well, this is entirely embarrassing.

Of course I was running the the sqllite3.exe while the device was connected. So no, I never did disconnect it to let it do its "catching up". Once I did that, author and series showed up in the database.

And the size was there all along, but I'd only looked for it immediately after importing.

I don't know what was up with the series/author problem displaying on the kobo, I'd tried disconnecting it, reconnecting a few times, using the kobo utils to update the metadata in the device library, and update the cached metadata in the device. None of this seemed to work. But I noticed I wasn't seeing the brief progress bar immediately after disconnecting the device, that I was used to seeing.

However, I just power-cycled it. Once it came up, everything looked fine on the kobo (in the GUI), the author, the series were all correct. And just to check, I deleted the books and re-uploaded them, and it all worked well. I even see the progress bar again.

So it appears to have been a case of user error on my part, 1. I didn't understand how calibre syncs, and 2. perhaps I also confused the device with all the plugging and unplugging I was doing.

Thank you davidfor!