Frequently Asked Questions

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

If you haven't done it, you should run Preferences -> Advanced -> Check database integrity. That will clean missing formats out of the db. It won't add extra books in, though.

If there is a record in the db (id#) and no corresponding folder in the library, do you know if it removes that record? What happens if you have an "empty" record - added with the Add books function, which allows empty records? Does it remove that record? (I'm not sure if those cases differ.) I've tried to run the integrity check, but it's always failed. I know there was a bug, later fixed, so that may be the cause.

[crangirl]

I'm trying to check the database integrity... but it stays at '0 %'..

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

If there is a record in the db (id#) and no corresponding folder in the library, do you know if it removes that record? What happens if you have an "empty" record - added with the Add books function, which allows empty records? Does it remove that record? (I'm not sure if those cases differ.)

From looking at the code (and not taking a lot of time to understand it), it appears that the integrity checker never removes records. It also seems to never remove or create folders. It does remove references in a book to format files that no longer exist.

@crangirl: did it ever finish, or at least say something? The process can take a long time on a big library.

[kovidgoyal]

The integrity checker does two things:

1) Dump and reload the SQL to fix any small errors in it and automatically optimize the database
2) Go over every book, check if every format listed in the books actually has a corresponding file, if not, remove the reference to that format.

[crangirl]

Originally Posted by crangirl

I'm trying to check the database integrity... but it stays at '0 %'..

Thanks for the info.

I'll try it again.

[crangirl]

Ah, checking the database worked (had to wait longer). Then I searched for format:false and now it did show more books/entries.

[DrFaust]

Is it possible to batch edit a lot of ebook with "ebook-meta" command?

I have 500 ".epub" books. Their languages is set to UND. I want to change them into "en". I can change one by one with ebook-meta command. but when I want to change all them I recive this error:

C:\Program Files\Calibre2>ebook-meta G:\Ebook\*.epub  -l en
Python function terminated unexpectedly
  (22, "invalid mode ('r+b') or filename") (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site.py", line 103, in main
  File "site.py", line 85, in run_entry_point
  File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\metadata\cli.py", line 156, in main
IOError: [Errno 22] invalid mode ('r+b') or filename: u'G:\\Ebook\\*.epub'

is there something wrong with the command that I used?
when I use it for only one Ebook, it does the job. Although I have to change the filename to something simple.

I have windows xp.
I can't use GUI (Calibre 0.7.5) to convert them all to epub again, because it takes so long and my cpu temp goes to 75 C.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by DrFaust

is there something wrong with the command that I used?

It won't take the wildcard. Two options I can think of - use the FOR loop in a batch file (or script a loop), or use SED to change the UND to EN.

[EricLandes]

Originally Posted by Starson17

It won't take the wildcard. Two options I can think of - use the FOR loop in a batch file (or script a loop), or use SED to change the UND to EN.

You don't strictly need to do a batch file. The command typed at the command line would be:

for %f in (*.epub) do ebook-meta %f -l en

This will find all the .epub files in the current folder and run the command after the "do" on each one.

[DrFaust]

Originally Posted by Starson17

It won't take the wildcard. Two options I can think of - use the FOR loop in a batch file (or script a loop), or use SED to change the UND to EN.

Thanks. I used a FOR loop and it worked.
for anyone who may have the same problem here is the code:

for %X in ("G:\Ebook\*.*") do ( ebook-meta "%X"  -l en

[DrFaust]

Originally Posted by EricLandes

You don't strictly need to do a batch file. The command typed at the command line would be:

for %f in (*.epub) do ebook-meta %f -l en

This will find all the .epub files in the current folder and run the command after the "do" on each one.

Thank you.
I wish you were here sooner. It took me 2 hours of googling to learn how to use FOR.

[rstickley]

While you're doing fun DOS tricks - I created a batch file of one line:

"c:\Program files\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" %1 %1.pdf

Now I can right click on a file and have it converted to PDF. At least the name doesn't get mangled (maybe the GUI can be told not to change the name??) and the right click is way faster than dragging/ converting / open folder / dragging back / deleting to my directory.

Of course, a right click to convert *could* be a handy feature to add...just saying...

[ilya]

Hello Kovid! First of all thank you so much for Calibre! That is an incredible tool indeed :-)

And here comes a question (i ve searched through the forum, guess there was no info).
Is there a way to skip some tags (proccessing the others of course), while fetching Google Reader entries with Calibre?

ps: I ve found a bug ticket (Ticket #1783), where you wrote that the tags would not be proccessed with non-ASCII characters in their names. I guess something has been changed since than, unfortunately (hehe) the non-ASCII tags (Cyrrilic in my case) are currently proccessed just great :-)

[kovidgoyal]

You'd have to modify the recipe code to do it. Try asking in the custom recipes thread, the people who wrote the recipe can usually be found there.

[WT Sharpe]

Another word of thanks as well, Kovid! I've given up on that crappy computer software that came with my Sony PSR-600, and am now using calibre exclusively to manage my Sony Touch library.