Kobo needs restart almost every time I add books

[Sirtel]

Maybe it's a bug in newer firmware versions. Older models use different versions.

Still, we should have seen more reports if that were the case.

[JSWolf]

I have a couple of ideas.

• Use Kobo Utilities to compress the data on your Kobo and see how that goes. While you have the Kobo plugged in and before the database compression, full backup the drive tot he computer.
• Log out of your Kobo and let the database reset. Then see what happens.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have a couple of ideas.

• Use Kobo Utilities to compress the data on your Kobo and see how that goes. While you have the Kobo plugged in and before the database compression, full backup the drive tot he computer.
• Log out of your Kobo and let the database reset. Then see what happens.

When you say log out of my Kobo, do you mean deregistering it? Is a database reset different from a factory reset?

What does compressing the data on my Kobo do? I'm assuming it's not getting compressed into a zip file on the Kobo...?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

When you say log out of my Kobo, do you mean deregistering it? Is a database reset different from a factory reset?

What does compressing the data on my Kobo do? I'm assuming it's not getting compressed into a zip file on the Kobo...?

Logging out is deregistering. It starts over. So you'd have to register again.

When you delete something from an SQL database, the space used is not removed. The technical term is vacuum. You remove the space that's left behind from data that's been deleted. You use Kobo Utilities to compress/vacuum the database.

I'm throwing out these suggestions in case the problem is something wrong with the database.

[Siavahda]

It might interest you experts in what others have said about this problem - I started a new post on Reddit to try and gather info. A few people have mentioned fixing this issue by finding out which book is messed up, and deleting that.

Does that sound plausible to anyone here?

(My kobo's in the process of backing up, JSWolf, I'll probably try your suggestion tomorrow after the backup is done.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

It might interest you experts in what others have said about this problem - I started a new post on Reddit to try and gather info. A few people have mentioned fixing this issue by finding out which book is messed up, and deleting that.

Does that sound plausible to anyone here?

(My kobo's in the process of backing up, JSWolf, I'll probably try your suggestion tomorrow after the backup is done.)

Good luck.

If it is a book causing the problem, when you remove all the books and put some back, it should work. Before you put the books back, use epubcheck to check them. Do no more then three.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Good luck.

If it is a book causing the problem, when you remove all the books and put some back, it should work. Before you put the books back, use epubcheck to check them. Do no more then three.

So the backup went faster than expected and I did what you said, JSWolf, compressed the data etc.

I'm extremely confused right now. After re-registering/logging into my Kobo, it still had all my books on it. Though the progress and annotations etc seem to be gone.

At what point was I supposed to remove the books? Or do I do that now?

[DNSB]

A sign out/sign in will supply a new database copy and your Kobo will import any sideloaded files after this. You will have to manually remove any sideloaded books.

Personally, I would remove the books manually or using calibre (the More => Settings => Imported Items => Remove all) for me is rather slow and then redo the sign out/sign in.

You may want to skip the next bit.

The last person I helped with a similar issue, we went for a manual factory reset and then sent his books back to the Kobo in blocks of 100 (they had about 860 books). On block 7, the import process hung and their Kobo restarted at ~ 78% (importing books starts at 6% and finishes at 94%). We removed the books sent in that block and sent 25 book blocks. On the third of those blocks, the import did the same restart near the end. This time, we sent 15 books and no issues. We then sent the last 10 books 1 at a time and the 6th book hung. So we sent the rest of his books. The book that glitched was opened in Sigil and we took a look at it. An old independently published dog's breakfast which epubcheck threw multiple screens full of error on. The CSS was very oddly configured, the ebook had multiple images wrongly labelled (a couple of .png images were named .jpg for instance). We killed about 30 minutes working on the book and after cleanup, it loaded on their Kobo without issues.

[Siavahda]

Is epubcheck significantly different to the Calibre editor's own 'check book' function, with the bug icon?

Basically, I'm starting to think I got enormously lucky - when I was removing books from my Kobo, the process stalled at 99%, on one particular book. I didn't put that one back onto my Kobo later, and so far, no more freezes! I've been testing it all day and it seems perfect now.

(So if anyone in the future finds this thread - delete the books off your Kobo through the file explorer, rather than using Calibre or any device functions. If it stalls on one book...you've found the problem file.)(Alternatively, JSWolf's suggestion about the database did the trick. Not sure there's a way to tell!)

I wanted to see if I could spot anything wrong with the book, so I would know what to look for next time (consensus seems to be no, it's not something you can spot with Calibre, but I wanted to try just in case). I ran epubcheck on it, and it found nothing wrong.

But the editor's bugcheck found 71 errors. So are they looking for different kinds of problems?

[PeterT]

Epubcheck (and a replacement tool epubveri, see https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=374286) verify that the ePub comply with all the elements of the official ePub specifications.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

Is epubcheck significantly different to the Calibre editor's own 'check book' function, with the bug icon?

Basically, I'm starting to think I got enormously lucky - when I was removing books from my Kobo, the process stalled at 99%, on one particular book. I didn't put that one back onto my Kobo later, and so far, no more freezes! I've been testing it all day and it seems perfect now.

(So if anyone in the future finds this thread - delete the books off your Kobo through the file explorer, rather than using Calibre or any device functions. If it stalls on one book...you've found the problem file.)(Alternatively, JSWolf's suggestion about the database did the trick. Not sure there's a way to tell!)

I wanted to see if I could spot anything wrong with the book, so I would know what to look for next time (consensus seems to be no, it's not something you can spot with Calibre, but I wanted to try just in case). I ran epubcheck on it, and it found nothing wrong.

But the editor's bugcheck found 71 errors. So are they looking for different kinds of problems?

Not everything the calibre checker reports is an error. Some are warnings that you can ignore if you want. I run both calibre's check and epubcheck and make sure there are no errors from either.

epubchek is easier to run from the editor then epubveri from the command line. Eeventually, I think a plugin should be made to use epubveri. But for now, epubveri is a work in progress.

[PeterT]

Remember you can also use epubveri from the web. Try https://veripublica.github.io/epubveri/ so no command line complexities

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Remember you can also use epubveri from the web. Try https://veripublica.github.io/epubveri/ so no command line complexities

Oh that is a LIFESAVER, thank you so much!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

But the editor's bugcheck found 71 errors. So are they looking for different kinds of problems?

epubcheck and epubveri both try to find any errors that are not permitted by the ePub standards. The calibre ebook-editor's bugcheck and Sigil's Well-formed ePub check are a lot more basic.

I've had ePubs that have passed calibre and Sigil's built-in check that epubcheck and epubveri have generated pages of error messages on.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Remember you can also use epubveri from the web. Try https://veripublica.github.io/epubveri/ so no command line complexities

It's still a lot more complicated then epubcheck in the editor. It always will be until epubveri is ready to be made into a plugin and then is.