Having trouble getting feeds to work; willing to help but don't know how

[tdavie]

Hello. I'm having a bit of difficulty getting feeds to work, so I'll describe what I'm doing.

I'm running Calibre .89 on OS X 10.5.5, both natively, and inside of VMWare Fusion on Windows XP Professional.

I will download a feed (say Newsweek, New York Times, USA Today, or Washington Post), both in LRF and EPUB format (separately one after the other if one fails to work), connect up my reader (a 505 purchased about 6 days ago with the July firmware update. I'll then connect my reader, and transfer the feed; sometimes in OS X, and sometimes in Win XP. I'll then unmount the reader and try to view the downloaded/transferred feed. Sometimes the reader will hang briefly, then reboot, and other times it will say invalid page and then reboot. About 20% of the time the feed will display correctly. I've tried transferring the feed using the Sony software, but the same set of phenomena happens.

Otherwise, using purchased and downloaded books is not a problem; just the feeds.

Scratching my head.

Tom

[kovidgoyal]

If you try again after the reboot, does it work?

[tdavie]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If you try again after the reboot, does it work?

I haven't tried, but will do so with a new feed when I get home tonight, and will report back here.

Tom

[tdavie]

No idea if this is repeatable, but.....

All downloaded in Calibre 0.4.89 directly on OS X, and then transferred to the reader, with the exceptin of 'The Washington Post', which was transferred directly with the reader connected while Calibre downloaded.

Addtionally, I was unable to download USA Today, and kept receiving this error message (at least, this eveing, although prior I was able to download this newspaper).

---------------part of error message---------------------
Job: Fetch news from USA Today
tuple: ('ValueError', u'invalid literal for float(): .')
Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.5/site-packages.zip/calibre/parallel.py", line 925, in worker
result = work(client_socket, func, args, kwdargs)
File "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.5/site-packages.zip/calibre/parallel.py", line 883, in work
res = func(*args, **kargs)
----------more error message but it was bloody long------------

1) New York Times....wiorks
2) Newsweek....works
3) Globe and Mail....works
4) Washington Post.... says 'formatting' for about 5 minutes, reboots, and then if I try again the same thing happens. This is with output and single file save both set to EPUB


I'm willing to provide more in depth and rigorous test results (OS X/XP, Calibre/Sony Software and EPUB/LRF outputs), just tell me what you need and I'll do it.

To directly answer your question though, no, trying again after the reboot does not seem to help, although I will try again after I have more spontaneous reboots (Washington Post has never worked for me, New York Times seems to work 50/50, USA Today seems to work 60/40, and the other are all hit and miss).

I'm still learning the ropes of my 505, so maybe something obvious will pop up.

thanks for reply/reading.

Tom

[kovidgoyal]

You should not be having reboot problems with EPUB files. Also transferring EPUB files using the SONY software gives you no advantage whatsoever, so dont bother doing that.

The only reboot problem I've seen with EPUB files is when clicking on links in the file.

I would suggest you wait a couple of weeks for the EPUB support to mature a little more.

As for LRF files. In my experience several feeds based LRF files cause the reader to reboot, but when this happens typically trying them again works.

[jamiepullman]

I've always had problems with the Scientific American feed. Trying to open it on the reader just results in a reboot. Is it too big at 6megs?

[kovidgoyal]

SciAm is being reworked. The next release has a feed that only fetches articles in the current issue.

[tdavie]

This morning I was able to get the New York Times working regularly.

I found that if I downloaded the feed directly to the reader, or to an SD card, it would act 'flakey' or unreliable. If I downloaded to my hard drive (in OS X), connected the reader and then transferred it to main memory, it went okay. This with file output type set to EPUB..

As an aside, the reason I had selected EPUB was because I had thought it was more relaible (that was just the general feeling I got from lurking here and reading)than LRF output. I am going to try saving feeds using the same procdure I've done here, but instead using LRF and see if that makes it any better.

thanks

Tom

[kovidgoyal]

that's strange. I see no reason why that should happen. In general, EPUB is more stable than LRF (at least it will be once calibre's epub support matures).

[tdavie]

Just thought I would let you know that as of 0.4.91 all the feeds that I've tried work (New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Newsweek). This is with EPUB output. I will try all others and report back here.

thanks much!

Tom

[kovidgoyal]

Glad to hear it

[tdavie]

Every sigle feed, with the exception of one called Jutarnji worked. This feed dowloaded, and transferred to the 505 okay, but when I tried to open it caused a reboot and lockup on the start up screen. I had to do a soft reset, and then things are okay.

This is with EPUB output.

Tom

[kovidgoyal]

OK good to know.