Glo Calibre/Kobo Glo "error communicating with device."

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@PeterT: I frequently delete a book using calibre and then send a replacement in the same session. I haven't seen a problem with this.

@Ripplinger: Could you try sending the book again and then checking on the device drive that it is there before disconnecting? If it is, then it is the device not liking the book. If it isn't there, then it is a calibre driver issue.

I didn't use Calibre at all for this one swap. Calibre transferring ebooks on my WinXP machine always ends up with the failed error and the reader being disconnected.

I've since discovered from the great help in this thread that using my pokey netbook that has Windows 7 on it does work without any errors, so when I transfer any number of books, I do it through the netbook (which is a pain since I use it for travel and rarely have it running at home). But it was a method that worked to make use of Calibre and how it can send titles, shelves, etc.

But to swap one book only that I was currently reading today I just did a drag and drop to the Kobo Glo, making sure Calibre wasn't sitting in the system tray. I didn't think it would have to do any reloading of content since file names were identical.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

But to swap one book only that I was currently reading today I just did a drag and drop to the Kobo Glo, making sure Calibre wasn't sitting in the system tray. I didn't think it would have to do any reloading of content since file names were identical.

At one point, I remember that changing the file size caused the book to be reprocessed.

Regards,
David

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I didn't use Calibre at all for this one swap. Calibre transferring ebooks on my WinXP machine always ends up with the failed error and the reader being disconnected.
I've since discovered from the great help in this thread that using my pokey netbook that has Windows 7 on it does work without any errors, so when I transfer any number of books, I do it through the netbook (which is a pain since I use it for travel and rarely have it running at home). But it was a method that worked to make use of Calibre and how it can send titles, shelves, etc.

I just assumed from the rest of the posts that it was through calibre. On my aging Win7 laptop, I don't see any of the problems that have been reported. I have to fire up an old XP laptop I have sitting around and see what happens.

But to swap one book only that I was currently reading today I just did a drag and drop to the Kobo Glo, making sure Calibre wasn't sitting in the system tray. I didn't think it would have to do any reloading of content since file names were identical.

Originally Posted by DNSB

At one point, I remember that changing the file size caused the book to be reprocessed.

This changed with firmware 2.8.1. Before that, if the book was on the main memory, it would get completely removed from the device: the file would be deleted and the database entries removed. But, if it was on the SD card, the database entries would be removed and the book processed and added as a new book. With 2.8.1, replacing a book on the main memory works the same as for the SD card. And yes, it is triggered by a change in file size.

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I didn't use Calibre at all for this one swap. Calibre transferring ebooks on my WinXP machine always ends up with the failed error and the reader being disconnected.

I've since discovered from the great help in this thread that using my pokey netbook that has Windows 7 on it does work without any errors, so when I transfer any number of books, I do it through the netbook (which is a pain since I use it for travel and rarely have it running at home). But it was a method that worked to make use of Calibre and how it can send titles, shelves, etc.

That's interesting. Running Calibre on my old XP desktop also bombs out when trying to send books to my Glo, so I too had to switch to use a Windows 7 netbook where Calibre runs ok.

On my XP machine I tried changing USB ports and cables but nothing seemed to fix it.

[tempest@de]

Just to had that I also have problems conecting the glo with calibre running in a windows xp, and I also tryed several things hopping it would solve the problem but I had no such luck.

[Ripplinger]

I'm really starting to miss being able to swap books to the Glo whenever I want. I'm thinking of downgrading my Calibre version to one I had when I first got the reader and see if that doesn't stop it. Will installing a lower version over 0.9.44 cause any issues with plugins or the metadata file?

[PeterT]

I'm somewhat confused as to why you think downgrading calibre will provide this functionality.

[Ripplinger]

When I first got the Glo, this problem didn't exist for me, I had zero problems transferring books to the reader. So it either has to be the version of Calibre, or possibly WinXP updates, that changed something on my system. I'm not saying it has to be Calibre, but it would rule Calibre out if I still had the issue and point more towards an update with WinXP from MS that made the changes that isn't playing nice with transferring between Calibre and Kobo readers.

[PeterT]

But all calibre does is to use operating system functions to copy data to / from the device.

And while yes you can downgrade calibre to a much older release, the majority of plugin authors do not provide old versions of their plugins.

What you could try is downloading a portable version of calibre into a new location and try it out (ie not touching your main install).

All versions of calibre can be found at http://download.calibre-ebook.com/

[BobC]

Have a look at this thread and see if anything rings a bell:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=219901

I seriously reduced the incidence of disconnects by doing some housekeeping !

It's always following the "Update metadata" phase where mine bombs out - the books get copied over (sometimes quite large numbers of them) and on disconnect are readable.

Another way that seems reasonably stable is not to load the Kobo drivers but to connect to the Glo as a USB Folder device. I don't think I have ever had a disconnect when running in that mode. This approach is more practical now that jgoguen has produced a Kepub conversion plugin.

BobC

[Ripplinger]

I finally got around to downgrading to firmware 2.4.0 today (2.4.0a from the MobileRead list of downloads). I immediately got the "error communicating with device" message so deleted only the 2 Calibre files of driveinfo.calibre and metadata.calibre and tried again.

I've been deleting and adding books in small increments and in large increments from 1 to 160 books at a time, multiple times without disconnecting the reader, and I've had zero problems. Not once did I get the "error communicating with device" message.

After I had all my books back on the device and renamed correctly, I disconnected the reader and then connected it again several times, deleting and transferring more books each time. Still no errors, and all the books actually remain correctly listed as being in my library. Before when they were renamed to include the series number and name by Calibre on sending to device, the Device side of Calibre would show those renamed titles as not being in my library.

I'll give it a few more days of connecting to the PC and see if this doesn't hold, but I'm very hopeful it will though because this is the furthest I've gotten without any communicating errors. With 2.5.1, one transfer or one deletion of one book would bring up the error, making it impossible to do much of anything through Calibre. And then as I said, all the renamed titles would be shown as not in the main Library.

I haven't noticed any bugs that affect me yet in 2.4.0, and I edited the version file to hopefully avoid any updates again. But I'm really hopeful about this working at this point after swapping books in and out all afternoon and not seeing any communicating errors.

Btw, I'm still on version 0.9.44 of Calibre. I haven't tried 1.0+ yet. When I do update Calibre, I'll report back if 2.4.0 is still working correctly. Before this downgrade, I was using 2.5.1 and have tried 2.6.1 and 2.8.1 and still had the communicating error with each Kobo firmware version.

I'm ecstatic at this point though after so many months of being aggravated trying to send books to the reader .

Edit: I noticed that the metadata.calibre file when I'd get all the connection errors was always 18+mb. Now that it's all working as it should, the same file with the same exact number of books is only 2mb, which is all it is on my Sony readers.

[davidfor]

@Ripplinger: That's very interesting. Deleting the calibre.metadata shouldn't have an affect, but if it was 18MB, then it is a large file to write. The files size should be dependent on the number of books on the device. So if you have the same books on two devices, the file should be roughly the same size. You didn't happen to keep a copy of the 18MB version?

[Ripplinger]

I do have a copy of it, I copied the entire contents of the Kobo ereader before and after the firmware change just in case. Is there something you want to dig through it and look for? That file has always been that large since this problem started. Even when I'd delete the majority of books from the reader, that file size wouldn't change. Looks like a max of 333 books were on the device then (and now).

Edit: I take that back, it looks like when I copied the entire contents over, that one file kept getting skipped. Sorry 'bout that.

[davidfor]

I was curious about why it was so big. I have about 1200 books on my Glo at the moment, the calibre.metadata is about 6.7MB in size. That means 18MB for 333 books is huge.

[Ripplinger]

Yes, I always noticed that about the file and wondered why it was so large for the Kobo. I had reset the Kobo Glo to factory several times and once updated to 2.5.1, the problem would simply start all over again.

If I feel like playing with it more, I can put 2.5.1 back on the reader (but after this weekend, won't have the time before Friday at least), it didn't erase anything, and when the file gets that large again (which it always did within the first or second connection through the USB to the PC), I could send you the file then if you think it'll be any help to pin down what is causing the communication errors. I've connected 3x more today and it's still working like a charm, no problems, and the file is still 2mb only.

But since I didn't also downgrade Calibre to use older drivers for the Kobo reader, this would have to point to something they changed in Kobo's firmware, right?