Using Viewer's Print option to convert a large ePub book to PDF took up large space!

[Rover2030]

Hi everyone,

I hope you all have a wonderful time.

I'm a new user here trying to figure out a solution to a problem I'm facing while using Calibre version 6.29 on MacOS Monterey. I tried to convert a 1.1 GB eBook in ePub format to PDF using the "Print" option in eBook Viewer, however due to not having enough disk space, the conversion failed halfway through, giving an error about not having enough space on the disk. I tried deleting some movies to clear some space and then trying again the conversion process, but I ran into the same issue. The problem is that each time the conversion process fails, I closed the eBook Viewer, but the hard disk free space stayed at a reduced level. Each time I tried to convert the eBook, and it failed, about 5GB-6GB of free space on my hard drive was gone. It seems that some large temporary files have been created on my hard drive, which I can't find and delete them. Calibre itself didn't delete them after each failure either.

Does any of you know where these temporary files are stored on MacOS?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kovidgoyal]

Temporary files are stored in /tmp. And why are you printing to PDF, just do a conversion to PDF instead. Though you will likely run into the same space issues.

[Rover2030]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Temporary files are stored in /tmp. And why are you printing to PDF, just do a conversion to PDF instead. Though you will likely run into the same space issues.

Hi Kovidgoyal, thanks for your reply. I just checked the folder you mentioned and there's nothing there. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

To answer your questions, I usually open the ePub files directly with ebook-viewer, this way, an additional copy of the eBook and other files/folders won't be added to the Calibre library. Also, it's very easy for me to use the print function as it keeps my previous settings, and it's very easy to change the settings if needed. It's the first time I've run into this issue. In fact, I ended up converting the book to PDF on another Windows machine with enough free space. Now, I'm just trying to figure out how to free up the wasted space on my Mac. I also tried a couple of Mac cleaner apps to see if they could detect/delete the temporary files, but I had no success. It seems like these apps are detecting these files as system files and not temporary/junk. Again, any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[Rover2030]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Temporary files are stored in /tmp. And why are you printing to PDF, just do a conversion to PDF instead. Though you will likely run into the same space issues.

Hi Kovidgoyal,

Please disregard this. It turned out that restarting the system cleared the temporary files (wherever they were stored).

Best,
Rover2030

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Rover2030

Hi Kovidgoyal, thanks for your reply. I just checked the folder you mentioned and there's nothing there. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

To answer your questions, I usually open the ePub files directly with ebook-viewer, this way, an additional copy of the eBook and other files/folders won't be added to the Calibre library.
. . .

You can convert via the ebook-convert CLI (Terminal) program, see ==>> User Manual: Command Line Interface.

BR