I am new to calibre and I have a big question

[jasonzimmie]

when i got calibre all set up for automatic adding of books from my file but for some reason it added some but not all of them and I can't find out why it is not adding them all, if someone could give me a hand I would appreciate it

[compurandom]

I assume you mean the automatic import from a directory setting.

I occasionally have issues with it not importing books that way. I've found the following possible reasons:

• Calibre doesn't recognize it as a book (wrong file type? file type not in the supported list?) Might be able to rename the file to the correct extension or change a checkbox in calibre settings somewhere. (can't remember where I saw that off the top of my head)
• The file has the wrong permissions; not sure why this is a problem, but it is. It will import the book immediately after you make it world readable.
• The file has an old date. In linux, touching the file will cause it to be imported immediately.

[ownedbycats]

Also, don't download files directly into the autoadd folder; download elsewhere and copy them in. For me, that's the usual cause of otherwise valid books getting stuck.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, don't download files directly into the autoadd folder; download elsewhere and copy them in. For me, that's the usual cause of otherwise valid books getting stuck.

Those don't get stuck for me. The browser creates an empty file of the correct name as a place holder, which calibre instantly imports and deletes, and a tempfile containing the real data which calibre ignores. When the download completes, the browser copies the data from the tempfile to the deleted file and deletes the tempfile.

Result: I can't find the real book, and calibre has imported something empty. Maybe the sequence of events is a bit different in windows and you end up with a stuck corrupt book?

Fix: I wrote something (for linux) that uses inotify and ignores the tempfile by regex and waits (using inotify) for the browser to close the real file, and then renames it into the calibre auto import directory. Right now, my code only looks at Downloads/books, but I've considered having it grab Downloads/*.epub too since I never download an epub I wouldn't want imported directly into calibre anyway.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, don't download files directly into the autoadd folder; download elsewhere and copy them in. For me, that's the usual cause of otherwise valid books getting stuck.

What's the difference between drag/drop into Calibre and copying to the auto-import directory? Not much and drag/drop is actually easier.

[DNSB]

I played with this and what I found was that downloading directly to the auto-add folder was not a good idea. My browser of choice is Firefox which creates a 0 byte file with the file name and then downloads to a temp file. During the download, the temp file contents seem to be copied to the filename file at odd intervals. If the auto-add triggers during the download before the process is completed, the results were, hmmm..., interesting.

Best to download to another directory and only copy the files to the auto-add folder when the download is completed.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What's the difference between drag/drop into Calibre and copying to the auto-import directory? Not much and drag/drop is actually easier.

The main difference is that DeDRM doesn't work with the autoadd folder.

Originally Posted by DNSB

I played with this and what I found was that downloading directly to the auto-add folder was not a good idea. My browser of choice is Firefox which creates a 0 byte file with the file name and then downloads to a temp file. During the download, the temp file contents seem to be copied to the filename file at odd intervals. If the auto-add triggers during the download before the process is completed, the results were, hmmm..., interesting.

Best to download to another directory and only copy the files to the auto-add folder when the download is completed.

Chromium-based browsers (Chrome obviously, MS Edge, I use Vivaldi myself) create a .crdownload file in the download location, which is then renamed to the proper extension once it finishes. I've found that Calibre tends to work okay with this for the most part. It was messing around with a third-party download manager (downloading a batch of game manuals) that didn't do this that I found the autoadd problem.