Troubleshooting Experimental Browser Downloads failing

[pjft]

Hi all,

Apologies for the first question. I've been a reader of posts here at MobileRead for a long time now, but today I ran into something that wasn't yet answered so I thought I'd post it here.

I have a Kindle Paperwhite 4 8GB, on Firmware v5.12.5 .

I'm trying to set up a Calibre-based Content Server at home so that I can download books to my Kindle via WiFi.

My issue is that when trying to download large books (400MB - they're comicbooks) the download via the Experimental Browser fails at different stages - sometimes less than 100MB are transferred, other times we get close to 200MB, but nothing systematic. Not only that, I get some large .goutputstream-* files created on my Kindle that I then need to manually delete.

To troubleshoot it I first tried to download from the PC browser twice and the files were transferred successfully.
Then I tried putting the files in a different home server and downloading from there to the Kindle - still failed.
Finally I transferred the file to Google Drive, tried to download from Google Drive to the Kindle and it failed again.

Is there a known file transfer size limitation/memory/keep-alive issue that might cause these transfers to fail? Is there anything that I might want to look into that may help me identify the cause - and hopefully as well a way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for your time and do let me know if there's any further detail I can share here.

Best.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by pjft

Hi all,

Apologies for the first question. I've been a reader of posts here at MobileRead for a long time now, but today I ran into something that wasn't yet answered so I thought I'd post it here.

I have a Kindle Paperwhite 4 8GB, on Firmware v5.12.5 .

I'm trying to set up a Calibre-based Content Server at home so that I can download books to my Kindle via WiFi.

My issue is that when trying to download large books (400MB - they're comicbooks) the download via the Experimental Browser fails at different stages - sometimes less than 100MB are transferred, other times we get close to 200MB, but nothing systematic. Not only that, I get some large .goutputstream-* files created on my Kindle that I then need to manually delete.

To troubleshoot it I first tried to download from the PC browser twice and the files were transferred successfully.
Then I tried putting the files in a different home server and downloading from there to the Kindle - still failed.
Finally I transferred the file to Google Drive, tried to download from Google Drive to the Kindle and it failed again.

Is there a known file transfer size limitation/memory/keep-alive issue that might cause these transfers to fail? Is there anything that I might want to look into that may help me identify the cause - and hopefully as well a way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for your time and do let me know if there's any further detail I can share here.

Best.

Is there a reason why you don't use the Send to Kindle app? (Maybe it doesn't work for comics? I don't know, I've never tried)

Shari

[pjft]

Originally Posted by shalym

Is there a reason why you don't use the Send to Kindle app? (Maybe it doesn't work for comics? I don't know, I've never tried)

Shari

Hi Shari,

Thanks for the reply. The reason for that is that the Send to Kindle app has a 25MB/50MB file size limit (unsure which these days), and as such won't work for these large files.

I use it extensively for smaller files, for sure - thanks for bringing it up!

Also, to be clear since I didn't mention it, the file transfers correctly over USB.

Thanks.

[Deskisamess]

Working with that experiment browser, that hasn't changed since 2009, takes so much time, it has to be quicker to just use USB.

I just tried it...my Paperwhite 4 browser won't even connect to the Content Server running on my laptop.

Edited to add, it did finally connect after I added "mobile" to the IP address, and a 200 mb book downloaded correctly. A USB connection would have been faster, but it did work.

[pjft]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Working with that experiment browser, that hasn't changed since 2009, takes so much time, it has to be quicker to just use USB.

I just tried it...my Paperwhite 4 browser won't even connect to the Content Server running on my laptop.

Edited to add, it did finally connect after I added "mobile" to the IP address, and a 200 mb book downloaded correctly. A USB connection would have been faster, but it did work.

Apologies, missed the notification. Actually, after your suggestion that it would work I tried the actual content server on my laptop, and later back to my NAS.

The key issue I was having was that I was interpreting the "moving animated circle" on the top left of the Kindle screen to be that it was downloading, and so when it stopped I assumed that it had finished.

In fact, by chance, this time around after giving up I left it on the browser window even after the circle disappeared, and after a few minutes a popup notification that the download had finished did show up!

So it was very much user error - it just assumed it was no longer downloading when in fact it still was.

Sorry for the trouble, and thank you for the patience.

[Deskisamess]

Glad to hear it's working. These browsers are sloooow. I only look at the one on my Kindles to check how to answer questions. I don't use it on a regular basis at all.

[pjft]

Indeed - thanks for helping out, it was your suggestion that it worked for you that indirectly led me to find out it worked! Learned something

Have a great weekend, thank you.