Windows 7 64-bit Upgrading from 0.6.16 to 0.6.37 problems

[kovidgoyal]

By all means write your own and show us how its done. I'll be waiting with bated breath.

[chaley]

At the risk of continuing the flame war ...

Assume someone in a park is offering free vanilla ice cream (and has all appropriate permits, etc ). Is it acceptable/correct to abuse that person because chocolate is not available or because you want Haagan Daz instead of a supermarket brand? I hope the answer is no. If you want something the person is not offering, find another person or buy it yourself.

One asks, then, why it is acceptable to abuse someone offering free software? If you want something ...

(In case it isn't clear, telling someone that s/he is guilty of "sloppy programming" and creates "crummy programmed applications" (c.f., post 11), and has produced "poorly written programs" (c.f., post 15) is abuse.)

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

At the risk of continuing the flame war ...

It was a risk worth taking

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by chaley

At the risk of continuing the flame war ...

Assume someone in a park is offering free vanilla ice cream (and has all appropriate permits, etc ). Is it acceptable/correct to abuse that person because chocolate is not available or because you want Haagan Daz instead of a supermarket brand? I hope the answer is no. If you want something the person is not offering, find another person or buy it yourself.

One asks, then, why it is acceptable to abuse someone offering free software? If you want something ...

(In case it isn't clear, telling someone that s/he is guilty of "sloppy programming" and creates "crummy programmed applications" (c.f., post 11), and has produced "poorly written programs" (c.f., post 15) is abuse.)

Totally agree.

Kovidgoyal has created a free cross-platform program for anyone to use. I'm not aware of any other programs that combine as many usefull features for ebook readers as Calibre, the fact that is allows us to collect books in so many formats and convert them to work on virtually any reading device available is fantastic. I'm quite willing to put up with a few quirks given the price (free) and the mass of functions, and as time goes on, Calibre should become more stable and easier to use (although I've had very little in the way of problems).

I think Kovidgoyal should be commended for actually producing this piece of software and not given abuse over it, especially as there is very little in the way of foundation for those comments.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by chaley

At the risk of continuing the flame war ...

Assume someone in a park is offering free vanilla ice cream (and has all appropriate permits, etc ). Is it acceptable/correct to abuse that person because chocolate is not available or because you want Haagan Daz instead of a supermarket brand? I hope the answer is no. If you want something the person is not offering, find another person or buy it yourself.

One asks, then, why it is acceptable to abuse someone offering free software? If you want something ...

(In case it isn't clear, telling someone that s/he is guilty of "sloppy programming" and creates "crummy programmed applications" (c.f., post 11), and has produced "poorly written programs" (c.f., post 15) is abuse.)

Yep - what they said.

If you get something free and then decide you don't like it, then just stop using it. No need to whine to the creator, particularly if you claim to be able to produce a superior product yourself.

Originally Posted by ghostyjack

Totally agree.

Kovidgoyal has created a free cross-platform program for anyone to use. I'm not aware of any other programs that combine as many usefull features for ebook readers as Calibre, the fact that is allows us to collect books in so many formats and convert them to work on virtually any reading device available is fantastic. I'm quite willing to put up with a few quirks given the price (free) and the mass of functions, and as time goes on, Calibre should become more stable and easier to use (although I've had very little in the way of problems).

I think Kovidgoyal should be commended for actually producing this piece of software and not given abuse over it, especially as there is very little in the way of foundation for those comments.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

It's poorly written programs like this that drive people like me to write my own and show how it's done!

Be sure to let us know when you've done so, in order that we may all bask in the radiance of your shining example.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

At the risk of continuing the flame war ...

Assume someone in a park is offering free vanilla ice cream (and has all appropriate permits, etc ). Is it acceptable/correct to abuse that person because chocolate is not available or because you want Haagan Daz instead of a supermarket brand? I hope the answer is no. If you want something the person is not offering, find another person or buy it yourself.

One asks, then, why it is acceptable to abuse someone offering free software? If you want something ...

(In case it isn't clear, telling someone that s/he is guilty of "sloppy programming" and creates "crummy programmed applications" (c.f., post 11), and has produced "poorly written programs" (c.f., post 15) is abuse.)

Hey! I wanted Cherry Garcia.

I just can not understand these people who tell Kovid and the Calibre crew that they did it all wrong.
Why not just Remove the software if it offends you so much?
[now back to our regularly scheduled programming]

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by theducks

I just can not understand these people who tell Kovid and the Calibre crew that they did it all wrong.

And while this interesting thread is playing out .... in the background, Kovid works through the bug list - helping people with problems, figuring out improvements and the like. Last night he found some code optimization that will dramatically improve speed for updating records in large databases (like mine). It will be in the next release.

I'd rather have that code improvement than Cherry Garcia!

[ciscoswitch]

I will simply say I'm sorry. My original intention was not to flame anyone, especially someone who is providing something to the open source community. I'm just frustrated, and somewhat upset. I'll explain a bit more:

I've never really had been a big fan of microsoft, I was a big fan of Commodore for the longest time, especially with the Amiga. Commodore demonstrated what really a OS should be, and their hardware at the time was simple amazing. Well as commodore died, I found myself using a PC with MS Dos/Windows 3.11 at the time, while I new my way around it, I still preferred my Amiga, and I still used it even though it was outdated, it worked for what I needed to do. I also got into linux as well. A couple years ago, I even setup my main computer with linux and demonstrated that I could still do everything I wanted to do (including games built for windows) on linux. I've been anti microsoft for quite a while. But, when Microsoft released Window XP, it was a big leap forward, it was very stable and had some nifty new features. Again the jump from XP to Vista was quite nice (Some people may not agree, there was quite a few problems with vista in the beginning, and it's memory requirements were quite higher than xp). From Vista to Windows 7 was another jump (again some people may disagree). Of course Windows ME was a big huge flop. At any rate, around the time of 98/XP I started to think about it, and thought the different configurations and hardware that MS is supporting (though it's really the companies writing drivers and such for their devices to be able to work in the OS), but also it had become a common standard to blame MS for any problems. I really started thinking about this, and realized that it's not MS that is ruining peoples computers (OK, so maybe some of it is their fault, but definately not all), from my days of trouble-shooting and configuring and setting up systems (in all different flavors of OS), as well as dealing with my own systems, I realized the problem. When you first install the OS, it's fast and snappy and generally works the way it's suppose to, the problem is that over time it degrades as you install and remove stuff from it. Programs do not remove everything they are suppose to, and over time your registry will grow and eventually start to become corrupt. I'm not exactly sure on the limits of the registry. Anyways, you end of making a choice... you either delete & reinstall (which in most cases is quicker than the latter), or you manually go through the system and find the culprits. The most common problems were related to the registry. When you install or use certain programs, they create entries in the registry for various things and settings (there was even a program that was storing data that the user entered into the registry), and then when one goes to uninstall that program, it leaves registry entries behind, and not only that, it doesn't remove all the files and such as well. Now files are not really a big deal, I mean it could be if your short on space and such, or have apps indexing stuff on the drive, such as microsoft search. But my point is that this really is not Microsoft's fault, but usually the blame is on Microsoft by most people. Now Microsoft could implement routines into the OS, to help keep this tidy, they shouldn't have to, but they could, and throughout their upgrades, they have addressed some things (such as with .dll files, programs would install different versions of .dll's for functions and such they use, lots of times these .dll's were different than what was on the system and would overwrite existing .dll's. Now this is kinda Microsoft's problem, in that the OS wouldn't exactly support multiple .dll's and would rely on the ones it needed. In Windows XP, they implemented the OS to keep all .dll's seperate, if a program had to replace one of them, it would allow it to, but it would keep all versions and keep track of which one is used for what program. That's just one example.

Now, I'm still anti microsoft in some ways, but I'm also a supporter (if that makes sense), I grow tired of people putting all the blame onto microsoft, or someone else rather themselves. Such is the fact of a program called Tunebite, on my computer it's drivers conflict with my sound card's control panel, upon getting support with it, they told me the problem was my sound card's control panel and not their software. Being this was an ASUS board and pretty popular, definately not some small off brand, I found this hard to believe, that the drivers for the sound card were at fault of some other program working with them. I understand that it's possible, but in this case it's very unlikely. My sound card worked fine otherwise. I contacted the sound card manufactorer just to humor myself, and they told me the problem was with the Tunebite drivers, and they actually went into detail a bit about it. But still it was the same thing, one points towards the other on whose problem it is.

Now in the case of calibre, I've seen various posts of people having issues, and them being told to manually delete certain files and folders, and reinstall and try again. With this, it proves that maybe either something should be built into the uninstaller, or a separate program written to scrub their computer of calibre clean, so that they can do a fresh install, this would eliminate the need to explain how to clean things off, so they can do a fresh install, but it also eliminates the possibility of the user not doing exactly what was directed. I believe that leaving those files there and worrying that someone will accidentally uninstall and loose are their settings is being selfish, or lazy to not fix the problem. At the very least maybe add an option to keep settings or remove settings. All I ever wanted to gain from this, was someone to take note, and say that's a good idea we'll add it in when we get a chance. Instead they got defensive and flamed me (hey I brought it on myself, I shouldn't have flamed them, just at the time I was frustrated).

With my job and all my hobbies, I really don't have the time to work on a calibre replacement, I'm sorry I even said that. I know I could write one, but it would take quite a while, as I have very little time to work on it, and sure it would most likely be buggy to begin with. However, would you ever consider re-writing the code in Perl? If I was to write one, I'd most likely use Perl, I believe it would give a tremendous performance boost, and at least on the linux platform, would run without version specific dependencies. Windows might be a little more hectic on the install though.

All that being said, my problem is when I try to upgrade to anything newer that 0.6.16 it installs fine, but I get an error about my library. The error details say that there is a duplicate column: uuid. Looking at the logs, it appears to be happening when upgrading the database between version 7 and 8. I do not believe that the db file is corrupt, as I have several backups of it, and it does it with all of them. If I go back to version 0.6.16 everything works fine. I've also tried installing the new version of calibre on 2 other different computers that never had calibre installed on them previously, and I get that same error. So from the looks of it, it seems that either something with or previous versions before 0.6.16 have modified the database and the new version isn't able to convert it, or there is some type of bug in database conversion routine. I know that people have responded and have had no problems with their upgrades, so it's a little hard to tell what the actual problem is.

If anyone wishes to respond to me (after all the things I've said), I just ask that you don't tell me to use some 3rd party installer, or tell me to delete my db file and try again. Calibre does work if I point it towards a new directory, however I have over 600 books in my library, and I really don't want to edit them all again, I had to manually add in stuff so it would look the way I wanted it to. If I create a new library, and tell it to add all the books from the old library, it adds them, but alot of the metadata is missing. I imagine that the metadata is stored in the db and not actually tagged on the ebooks.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

I will simply say I'm sorry. My original intention was not to flame anyone, especially someone who is providing something to the open source community. I'm just frustrated, and somewhat upset.

Very well said.

If anyone wishes to respond to me (after all the things I've said), I just ask that you don't tell me to use some 3rd party installer, or tell me to delete my db file and try again.

Perhaps you should delete all registry keys and files, then add them back one at a time until things work?

[Apologies for the very poor attempt at humor. It is that time of day. The truth is that I have no idea what to suggest, other than to upgrade version by version in hopes that the database table upgrade routines of a closer release might do the right thing. And this suggestion is, I admit, quite impractical, especially since there is no evidence that it would fix the problem.]

[ciscoswitch]

Update, I tried incrementally installing versions..

From 0.6.16 to 0.6.17 - Worked
From 0.6.17 to 0.6.18 - Worked
From 0.6.18 to 0.6.19 - Worked
From 0.6.19 to 0.6.20 - Error Same error.
From 0.6.19 to 0.6.21 - Error Same error.

ERROR: Invalid database: <p>An invalid library already exists at P:/Seagate 1TB/Calibre eBooks, delete it before trying to move the existing library.<br>Error: duplicate column name: uuid
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 142, in run
OperationalError: duplicate column name: uuid

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\wizard\__init__.py", line 440, in move_library
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 427, in __init__
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 670, in upgrade_version_7
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 171, in run
DatabaseException: duplicate column name: uuid
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 142, in run
OperationalError: duplicate column name: uuid

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

Error: duplicate column name: uuid

Make a copy of your metadata.db and grab a copy of SQLiteSpy and try to remove the uuid field. It looks like it's got that field in there, but thinks its an older version of Calibre (that perhaps didn't use that field) and is trying to add it in, but is failing. I've seen initialization code that tries to detect the version of Calibre, then modifies the database the first time it runs. Maybe the uuid field is added at some point as a version upgrade, it added the field, but failed to complete the upgrade and you are stuck halfway? Running now might try to add that field again? The SQL command would be

ALTER TABLE table_name
DROP COLUMN column_name

SQLiteSpy will tell you which table it's in (I think it's books) and the command above may let you drop it (Column name would be uuid). (Just a shot in the dark - Kovid would know if this has any chance of working). You could also check the code - search for uuid and ALTER TABLE commands.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

I will simply say I'm sorry. My original intention was not to flame anyone, especially someone who is providing something to the open source community. I'm just frustrated, and somewhat upset. I'll explain a bit more:

Most of the time when someone says, "I'll explain a bit more" it goes from bad to worse. But your explanation did no harm. It was the first to mention you were still having problems. It was 53 days between your original request for help and your response, freaking over your pet peeve.

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

All that being said, my problem is when I try to upgrade to anything newer that 0.6.16 it installs fine, but I get an error about my library. The error details say that there is a duplicate column: uuid. Looking at the logs, it appears to be happening when upgrading the database between version 7 and 8. I do not believe that the db file is corrupt, as I have several backups of it, and it does it with all of them. If I go back to version 0.6.16 everything works fine. I've also tried installing the new version of calibre on 2 other different computers that never had calibre installed on them previously, and I get that same error. So from the looks of it, it seems that either something with or previous versions before 0.6.16 have modified the database and the new version isn't able to convert it, or there is some type of bug in database conversion routine. I know that people have responded and have had no problems with their upgrades, so it's a little hard to tell what the actual problem is.

Your right the vast majority uninstalled 0.6.16 prior to attempting 0.6.17 and didn't have a problem. I have no insight into this error, hopefully someone will have some idea of how to fix it.

Originally Posted by ciscoswitch

If anyone wishes to respond to me (after all the things I've said), I just ask that you don't tell me to use some 3rd party installer, or tell me to delete my db file and try again. Calibre does work if I point it towards a new directory, however I have over 600 books in my library, and I really don't want to edit them all again, I had to manually add in stuff so it would look the way I wanted it to. If I create a new library, and tell it to add all the books from the old library, it adds them, but alot of the metadata is missing. I imagine that the metadata is stored in the db and not actually tagged on the ebooks.

If 0.6.16 has an adequate Save to Disk function I would suggest you follow my backup #2 plan outlined in this post.

Good Luck.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I've seen initialization code that tries to detect the version of Calibre, then modifies the database the first time it runs. Maybe the uuid field is added at some point as a version upgrade

I have no idea if this will work, but I can see that at line 671 of database2.py, it is trying to add this column to the database as part of the upgrade process. Somehow you appear to have gotten stuck halfway.

[kovidgoyal]

I would recommend using save to disk to backup all your files (this will save metadata as well). Then change the library location and re-import those books.