Library Disappearing

[kovidgoyal]

If you're using quotes you cant use the ~ character as a shortcut

[Knocka]

I did it. It created a new folder in the eBooks/<author> folder with the title of the book (3). I did not realize it, so I opened Calibre, and the book appeared in the library. I then removed the book, and ran the command again. This time, it created it with (4). So, the Command appears to have done the same thing that would have occurred if I had used the Add Book command in Calibre (the book gets added to the Library and a duplicate folder and file gets created.
Here is the Terminal Output:
iMac:~ Chris$ calibredb add "Documents/eBooks/Robert B. Parker/Early Autumn (2)/Early Autumn - Robert B. Parker.mobi"
CPG-iMac:~ Chris$ calibredb list
idtitle authors
4 Early Autumn Robert B. Parker

[Knocka]

Also, when I originally added the Books, I edited the metadata to change the author and title and add a Series. The Author and Title information is correct in this newly added verison, but the series information was lost.

[kovidgoyal]

When you remove a book from calibre, the folder is not neccessarily deleted, only the files. And when you edit the metadata, changes are not written to the files. So deleting and re-adding books will cause you to lose them metadata changes. Metadata is only written to files when you use save to disk or send to device. The question is when you run calibre add a book, shut it down and restart it, are the books now still in the library or not?

[Knocka]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

When you remove a book from calibre, the folder is not neccessarily deleted, only the files.

When I remove a book from the Library, the entire folder that Calibre created when I first added the book IS deleted. Here is what I am doing:
(1) Adding a book in html format to the library (not from the eBooks folder but from some random place on my computer). At this stage, I can see (because I have Finder open to the eBook folder, that the Folder and .zip file have been created in the eBooks folder).
(2) Changing the Author and Title.
(3) Converting the book to .mobi format (so I can ultimately upload to Kindle).
(4) After conversion, I can see that the .mobi file has been created.

At this point, if I then Remove the book, the entire folder, including the .zip and .mobi files are deleted from the eBooks folder.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And when you edit the metadata, changes are not written to the files. So deleting and re-adding books will cause you to lose them metadata changes. Metadata is only written to files when you use save to disk or send to device.

I must be misunderstanding something. I am not using Save to Disc. I thought that when the book was added to the Calibre library, it created the folders in my eBooks folder. I actually see them created, as I indicated above.

And if I hit Save to Disc, I get a Save dialog box. Am I supposed to Save to the same eBooks folder? Or am I supposed to create a duplicate in another location. What am I missing here?

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The question is when you run calibre add a book, shut it down and restart it, are the books now still in the library or not?

Now, when I restart Calibre, the Books I just added are still in the Library (including the one added using Terminal).

[itimpi]

Removing a book is MEANT to remove all formats of that book.

If you want to remove a specific format but leave the rest of the book entry intact then use the Edit Metadata dialog which allows you to remove a specific format.

[Knocka]

I understand that.

I must be misunderstanding something. I am not using Save to Disc. I thought that when the book was added to the Calibre library, it created the folders in my eBooks folder. I actually see them created, as I indicated above.

And if I hit Save to Disc, I get a Save dialog box. Am I supposed to Save to the same eBooks folder? Or am I supposed to create a duplicate in another location. What am I missing here?

I actually just tried using the Save to Disc function. I end up with another copy of the folder and files.

I really like the idea of this program and can see it would be very useful (and will donate to you), but I am just not understanding it. It seems to me that once the book is added to the Library, and Calibre creates the folder structure to store it in the eBooks folder, there should be no need to Save to Disc and create another copy of the files.

[itimpi]

I am not sure quite what it is you are trying to achieve that you think is not working?

The Save to Disk function is used when you want to export books from the Calibre library.

[shighfield]

Knocka: On my iMac here's what I do. The directory that I add books from is: /volumes/8gb/books/ As you can tell that is a portable USB drive where I store all the books as downloaded.

I then Add them to calibre. Calibre copies the book to my Calibre folder which is ~/dropbox/1-Calibre

This way I can access my library from any of my computers by installing calibre and telling it that is where my library is. No save to disk needed.

I think all you need to do is place the books you want to add in a different directory that calibre doesn't use internally and add them.

Let me know,

[Knocka]

Originally Posted by itimpi

I am not sure quite what it is you are trying to achieve that you think is not working?

The Save to Disk function is used when you want to export books from the Calibre library.

The original problem was that when I closed Calibre, and re-opened it, the Libary was empty. So all I was originally trying to achieve was to cause Calibre to retain the Library information when it was closed and re-opened.

[Knocka]

Originally Posted by shighfield

Knocka: On my iMac here's what I do. The directory that I add books from is: /volumes/8gb/books/ As you can tell that is a portable USB drive where I store all the books as downloaded.

I then Add them to calibre. Calibre copies the book to my Calibre folder which is ~/dropbox/1-Calibre

This way I can access my library from any of my computers by installing calibre and telling it that is where my library is. No save to disk needed.

I think all you need to do is place the books you want to add in a different directory that calibre doesn't use internally and add them.

Let me know,

I am doing that. The books I am testing this with are in html format. They are in the /Desktop/Test folder. The Calibre folder is /Documents/eBooks.
(1) I add them to Calibre using Add Books.
(2) Calibre creates a subfolder of /Documents/eBooks based on what it perceives to be the author (based, I assume, on the filename). It creates a file in this new subfolder with a .zip extension.
(3) I then change and correct the Author, Title information, and tried adding a Series name and Book # in those Metadata fields.
(4) I then used Convert to create a .Mobi file.
(5) I can see the .mobi file created in the same subfolder that has the .zip extension.
I did this with about 5 such files as a test.
But, when I closed and re-opened Calibre, the Library was empty, although all the new sub-folders and files and a Metadata.db file were all present in the Calibre folder specified in #2 above.
Also, Remove Book caused the entire new sub-folder to be deleted.

So, all I am trying to accomplish is what I said above, and have the new Metdata retained and the Library retained when I close and re-open Calibre.

[kovidgoyal]

Here's another thing to try

Add a book to calibre, open the preferences and note the location of the library folder

close calibre

restart it

is the location of the library folder in the preferences unchanged?

[Knocka]

I seem to have gotten it working. I deleted the entire folder structure and started from scratch. When I first tried, I added an html file, then converted to mobi. When I closed claibre and re-opened, the Library was gone. So I deleted the folders again and tried again.

This time, after converting, I had Calibre Remove all the ZIP files using the Bulk Metadata edit function. I closed Calibre, and re-opened, and the library was there.

And, from that point on, once the Library was "retained" the first time, it kept remembering it each time I added new books, closed and opened Calibre.

By the way, why not have an Add Library option so that it can save multiple libraries and there is always a way to OPen your Library if it fails to load it, as was happening to me?

[shighfield]

Strange... I've opened the same library on three computers and never had it corrupt itself yet, but I'll agree that would be a good feature to just re-import the library from an older backup if it gets corrupt.

[kovidgoyal]

If you have an old library all you have to do is change the path to point to that old library in the calibre preferences dialog