[The Older version] Calibre2opds V2

[Viseguy]

Originally Posted by itimpi

The correct instructions for installing Calibre2opds are in the online documentation. This includes how to do a manual install if the installer is not behaving.

Thanks for the quick reply. I have tried both the installer and the manual install, each several times, to no avail.

Originally Posted by itimpi

To look further at why you are having problems can you please do the following:
- Start up a Command window (DOS Prompt)
- Change the current directory to the location where the calibre2opds binaries are located
- Use the RunGui.cmd command from that location to see what error messages (if any) are output.

Here it is:

F:\Calibre2Opds>rungui.cmd

F:\Calibre2Opds>start javaw -cp OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar Gui

F:\Calibre2Opds>

There is no error message. Nothing happens.

I should note that, when I run the installer, I never see the following dialog:



I also never see any of the subsequent dialogs illustrated in the Wiki instructions. The only dialogs presented are two: to choose the language, and to choose the installation directory. After I pass these, the installer simply reports a successful installation. I click "Done", and it exits.

Once again, this is what a DIRectory of the binaries folder looks like:

Volume in drive F is FAT32APPS
Volume Serial Number is 8286-5DC6

Directory of F:\Calibre2Opds

09/05/2010 01:52 AM <DIR> .
09/05/2010 01:52 AM <DIR> ..
09/05/2010 01:52 AM <DIR> Uninstaller
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 1,170 calibre2opds-text-icon_64.png
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 3,262 uninstall-icon_32.ico
07/15/2010 09:22 AM 47 rungui.cmd
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 232,354 junit-4.7.jar
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 35,147 licence.txt
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 58,957 DataModel-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 38,366 calibre2opds-icon_192.png
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 680,475 OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar
07/15/2010 09:22 AM 95 rungui.sh
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 19,316 Tools-2.2-SNAPSHOT.jar
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 8,887 uninstall-icon_64.png
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 145,136 calibre2opds-icon.png
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 3,262 calibre2opds-icon-small_32.ico
07/23/2010 05:21 AM 9,935 readme.txt
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 153,115 jdom-1.1.jar
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 358,085 log4j-1.2.12.jar
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 3,262 calibre2opds-text-icon.ico
07/23/2010 05:19 AM 15,677 release.txt
07/15/2010 09:22 AM 99 run.sh
05/12/2010 08:18 AM 7,447 calibre2opds-icon_64.png
07/23/2010 05:34 AM 2,386,512 sqlite-jdbc-3.6.17.1.jar
09/05/2010 02:41 AM 4,049 .installationinformation
09/05/2010 03:03 AM 45 run.cmd
23 File(s) 4,164,700 bytes
3 Dir(s) 24,824,676,352 bytes free

Thanks again for any help you can provide.

[itimpi]

Well, I have now tried using XP Pro SP3 and can reproduce SOME of the symptoms you report.

When I run the installer I do not get the dialog asking about Shortuts but I do get the remaining ones. There is no shortcut set up on the Start Menu

However if I navigate to C:\Program Files\Calibre2Opds and then run the RunGUI.cmd file then Calibre2Opds starts up with no problems.

I did have the latest Java installed from java.com which is version 6 Update 21 in case that is relevant, but I would not have thought so.

That makes it confusing as to why you are unable to get Calibre2Opds to run.

[Viseguy]

Thanks for trying. I upgraded to Java 6 Update 21, but still no joy. I'll try contacting David Pierron directly.

[itimpi]

I am not sure that Dave can help you as I do much of the Windows testing prior to a release being made. However he does the vast majority of the Java coding so something might occur to him. I will be talking to him this morning myself anyway so will bring up your issue.

A couple of other small things you can try
- Start a command prompt and go to the calibre2opds folder
- Issue the command "java" with no parameters to check that the Java command is being found. This should resulting a screenful of the options available with the java command
- list the contents of the rungui.cmd file using "type rungui.cmd"
- run the command resulting from the above removing the "start" from the front and replacing "javaw" by "java"

The idea behind this is to check that Java is being found, and also that your system is not having any issues with the "start" command. It is also more likely to give an useful error message as the Command Prompt window will not be closed.

[Viseguy]

Originally Posted by itimpi

- run the command resulting from the above removing the "start" from the front and replacing "javaw" by "java"

Here is the result of running the java command; maybe it will provide a clue:

F:\Calibre2Opds>java -cp OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar Gui
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at Gui.main(Gui.java:11)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.gmail.dpierron.calibre.configuration.StanzaCon figuration.load(StanzaConfiguration.java:279)
at com.gmail.dpierron.calibre.configuration.StanzaCon figuration.tryAndLoadProperties(StanzaConfiguratio n.java:261)
at com.gmail.dpierron.calibre.configuration.StanzaCon figuration.<init>(StanzaConfiguration.java:142)
at com.gmail.dpierron.calibre.configuration.StanzaCon figuration.<clinit>
(StanzaConfiguration.java:23)
... 1 more

Once again, thanks for your efforts.

[itimpi]

That should help as it indicates where in the java code the failure is occurring. It appears to be something to do with trying to locate your home directory to look for configuration information.

Just a thought - you do not have any none-ASCII characters in your windows username in case that is not being handled correctly, or are running a none-English variant of windows? If you issue the command
Echo %appdata%
in a command window that should tell us where your home folder is located. If that command fails for any reason then simply use the "set" command with no parameters - it would give a lot more output but the information requested should be amongst it somewhere.

Another possibility might be to specify explicitly the folder to hold your calibre2opds configuration information as specified here in the calibre2opds documentation.

[chaley]

@itimpi: I note that Viseguy has installed calibre2opds on F:. Could there be any dependencies on drive paths, such as the home directory must be on the same drive as calibre2opds (non-drive-rooted paths)?

[itimpi]

The software can be anywhere.
The home folder should be wherever window says it is located
I am not sure if none-ascii characters in any paths are handled correctly. I must set up some special tests for that. Also not sure if the home directory on a network drive as in many corporate environments works OK - cannot test that myself. UNC paths could also be an issue I guess - not sure if Java handles that transparently or not.

[dpierron]

Hi Viseguy,

I'm sorry to see that you have problems with our software. We're actively trying to understand what happens.

I'll state some facts :

1. Dave is my other half in this project; actually, he's the guy who had the idea of generating a Calibre catalog. He's in charge of a lot of things, from user support to documentation, installation scripts, features management, and developper management too - managing me, in effect
2. We've opened a new user support forum at GetSatisfaction. If possible, it would be easier for us if the feature requests, bug reports, and all discussion about Calibre2Opds problems went there...
3. You're having an installation problem that we identified, reproduced, and are working on correcting right now
4. You're also having a (much worse) runtime error problem. I cannot understand why it would fail at this point in the code, so we'd like more information about your system. As Dave said, issuing a SET command at the command line prompt and sending us the result would help a lot. Trying to run with the CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG environment variable set would probably help, too. And we're working on adding more logging to the program...

Hope this helps, and we solve your problem soon !
David.

[Viseguy]

Thanks so much for all the replies!

Here are the contents of the %appdata% e-var:

F:\Calibre2Opds>echo %appdata%
C:\Documents and Settings\CLD\Application Data

I tried launching the application with a parameter specifying the location of my calibre metadata.db file (I've used "foo\bar" in the example below; the actual dir is a Dropbox folder and you can safely assume that my actual command is correct). When I run each of the commands shown below, there are no error messages reported; however, nothing happens:

F:\Calibre2Opds>javaw -cp OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar Gui G:\foo\bar\ebooks\

F:\Calibre2Opds>start javaw -cp OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar Gui G:\foo\bar\ebooks\

As for the CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG variable, I don't really understand what I would be doing with it. (I'm familiar with DOS environment vars and I know how to use them in BAT and CMD files, so don't worry about explaining that.) In the Wiki documentation, CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG points to a subdirectory of Calibre2Opds, called Calibre2OpdsConfig. This subdirectory does not exist in my installation directory. I could create it, of course, but I don't know what files it should contain, nor what those files should contain. Am willing to do all of that manually (assuming that they're all text files that I can create with a text editor), but would need to know the details.

Appreciate your concern -- and I hope these problems are not specific to me but will help improve the software for everyone.

P.S. Will post to the GetSatisfaction board next time, but it seemed to make sense to continue this thread here.

[itimpi]

You cannot pass in the location of the Calibre library via the Command line - it now gets picked up from the saved calibre2opds configurationnset up from the GUI. Note also that if you use the javaw command you will not see error messages at the command prompt level - they are only shown if you simply use java.

The CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG environment variable points to a folder where you want calibre2opds to put it's config information (f it is missing then your XP home area is used). It can be any folder to which you have read/write access. The folder you mention in the documentation is one that is suggested for a 'mobile' installation. If you look a bit further up it gives a suggested folder layout for such a setup.

I was speaking to Dave Pierron today and he is puzzled as to how it can fail in quite the way your earlier java exception messages suggest. If necessary we will get a version with extra debug in it for you to use. As I mentioned calibre2opds worked fine for me when I ran a test on XP so it is not an inherent problem with XP. Just a check - you are using a 32-bit of XP rather than a 64-bit version.

[Viseguy]

And I've (more or less successfully) generated a catalog.

Setting the CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG variable made the difference. I created a subdirectory Calibre2OpdsConfig under the main program directory. Then I edited RUNGUI.CMD as follows:

set CALIBRE2OPDS_CONFIG=F:\Calibre2Opds\Calibre2OpdsCo nfig
start java -cp OpdsOutput-2.3-SNAPSHOT.jar Gui

The GUI interface popped up, and I was able to get going.

The only problem I'm having now is that, although I have 50 books by 36 authors in my calibre database, the Opds catalog only includes the News items and the calibre guide (all items with author "calibre"). The other authors appear as subdirectories of the directory that contains metadata.db, if that's significant.

Many thanks for your patience and for all the explanations. You guys are great!

ETA: I noticed that the books included in the catalog are in either EPUB or MOBI format, while the excluded books are all AZW. The OPDS Wiki entry says: "This standard, also called OpenPub, supports ePUB as the primary reading format although additional formats are supported." Is AZW perhaps not one of those additional formats?

[itimpi]

Glad to hear that you have got past the initial hurdle although I am still not sure why your problem occurred in the first place!

The OPDS standard does not limit the formats that can be included, although the reader device will be constrained in what it can handle. In calibre2opds you can specify what formats entries should be generated for on the Advanced Customisation tab. You can specify either a list of formats or ALL if you want every format in your library (although that might result in formats your reader cannot handle if you have them in your library). If there are multiple matches to that list you can also specify (optionally) that only a link for the earliest match should be generated.

If you find that you still cannot get AZW to show up let us know in case there is a bug in calibre2opds.

[Viseguy]

Originally Posted by itimpi

The OPDS standard does not limit the formats that can be included, although the reader device will be constrained in what it can handle. In calibre2opds you can specify what formats entries should be generated for on the Advanced Customisation tab. You can specify either a list of formats or ALL if you want every format in your library ...

If you find that you still cannot get AZW to show up let us know in case there is a bug in calibre2opds.

Oh, good, glad there's no limit on formats. Will look at the Advanced tab tonight and will let you know what happens.

[suecsi]

I've got as far as publishing the catalog to Dropbox and it works fine, although no azw show. I'm just happy to have got this far.

However, when I browse to the URL via the Kindle 3 Browser, I can get all the way through to the download page fine, but then it kicks out with a error from Dropbox saying 'Oops! (404)'

Any ideas?