PW4 Script to remove annoying message?

[booklover6]

I am wondering if there is or can be created a script or something to remove the annoying message when I load books to my PW4.

Here is the message in full:

Folder is almost full

One of the subfolders under Documents folder has exceeded 2000 items. To continue adding more items to your device, we recommend creating a new subfolder under Downloads.

CLOSE

There is a "downloads" folder in documents, to which, as an experiment, I have added some books. There is no change in how viewing these documents is done after the device is disconnected. It is not the way I plan to add books, however. Also, I should note that this message in no way prevents me from adding more books the usual way (via Calibre). Also there is something like 4G free space on the device, so I find it very annoying that this message appears.

Yes it is merely an annoyance easily dealt with. I am just wondering if any of you programming geniuses have a way to silence it!

Thanks!

[haertig]

Most likely there is a reason for that message. I doubt they just randomly put it in there out of the blue to annoy users. My guess would be that they have some kind of software bug that causes intermittent and unpredictable issues when a high number of books a found in a single directory. You may not have experienced any issues. Yet. But you might tomorrow.

Or, this message could be a simple warning. There may indeed be a hard limit of how many books you can put into a single directory. Maybe that number is 2100. Or 2500. And they are just warning you that you are nearing this hard limit where you won't be able to add any more books. If this is the case, it would be nice if they told you what the actual hard limit is, and how many books you have. Something like "You can have a maximum of 2500 books in a single directory, and you currently have 2372. You can avoid problems in the future by starting a new directory."

Messages like this are sometimes used when programmers can observe a problem repeatedly, but can't determine the steps required to force it to happen reliably. It's kind of like "We realize there is a problem, but we haven't solved it. You may be able to avoid the problem if you do XYZ though. That sometimes, kindof, maybe seems to help on occasion."

What you decide to do with that message is up to you. You can heed it. Ignore it. Or try to find a software patch to disable it. If you really have over 2000 books in a single directory (wow!) then my guess is that you probably don't want any issues with that (maybe display glitches, some books not showing up, other corruption - who knows). You might already have these issues and just not be aware of it yet.

The best path is obviously for the programmers to fix there software. But since they obviously have not been able to do that yet, the choice of how you choose to coexist with the potential glitch/corruption is up to you. I would also warn you that just because they mentioned "2000 books" does not mean that this is a hard and proven limit. The problem might start occurring at 1500 books. Or 2500 books. Or 1000 books. Messages like you are seeing could be "dirty laundry" that programmers really wish you wouldn't be seeing in the first place. They are acknowledging a problem exists. And also acknowledging that they don't really know all aspects of the cause, let alone how to permanently fix it. Most programmers that I know (and I am one of them) tend to hide messages like this in comments in their code. But in your case, the programmers made it into a message displayed to the end user. That is not as common, but it happens.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by booklover6

I am wondering if there is or can be created a script or something to remove the annoying message when I load books to my PW4.

Here is the message in full:



There is a "downloads" folder in documents, to which, as an experiment, I have added some books. There is no change in how viewing these documents is done after the device is disconnected. It is not the way I plan to add books, however. Also, I should note that this message in no way prevents me from adding more books the usual way (via Calibre). Also there is something like 4G free space on the device, so I find it very annoying that this message appears.

Yes it is merely an annoyance easily dealt with. I am just wondering if any of you programming geniuses have a way to silence it!

Thanks!

It is a for-real warning message.
Keep in mind this is Windows/FAT32 which, depending on options set when created, has limits on size and count of files.
That includes directories.


Note: The Kindles have a "flat world view" of the user USB storage area.
It does not recognize the file tree structure.
So moving books to sub-directories of /Documents will not change how the Kindle lists them.


Note: Not so with KOReader, KOReader recognizes the directory tree structure.

[booklover6]

So, how about this for a solution: Load books as normal with Calibre, and then move them into the "downloads" folder, which is in the documents folder?

Maybe a future firmware upgrade will fix this issue?

For comparisons sake, I loaded over 2000 on my Voyage, and the message never appeared, although it is on a much older firmware version.

[ilovejedd]

When sending via Calibre, use a Send to device structure such as this:

{tags}/{authors}/{series}/{title}

That should help limit the number of items in a single directory.

Probably better for performance, too. It's easier on the device to have 10 folders with 200 files each than have a single folder with 2000 items.

[NiLuJe]

That won't prevent FAT32 from giving up the ghost.

Forget about the "Downloads" recommendation from the warning message (which is probably just there for Joe Random).

How is your Calibre setup as far as directory structure goes when using "Send To Device"?

EDIT: @ilovejedd typed faster ;p.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by booklover6

So, how about this for a solution: Load books as normal with Calibre, and then move them into the "downloads" folder, which is in the documents folder?

Maybe a future firmware upgrade will fix this issue?

For comparisons sake, I loaded over 2000 on my Voyage, and the message never appeared, although it is on a much older firmware version.

First you need to get Microsoft to change the FAT32 design specs.
Then you need to get everybody who uses it with their consumer devices to adopt (or at least non-destructively recognize) the new format.
After that, get Linux to include support in their VFAT system.

So I would not hold my breath for all of that to happen.

I have no idea what is involved in "Load books as normal with Calibre"

So Lab126 has decided to not throw away the error message on newer firmware.
You could always do a binary search for the string (or just use the 'string' command) to find it and then use a hex editor to zero in out.
At the same time, you could also replace the low battery warning image with ????

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by knc1

First you need to get Microsoft to change the FAT32 design specs.

I don't believe there's a 2000-item hard limit per directory in the FAT32 specifications. More likely, once there's more than a specific number of items in a folder, then the Kindle indexer fails or runs into some issue that may cause the Kindle to crash.

I have a folder (on FAT32 partition) with 6000+ items on one of my Windows XP VMs. That said, even on a Core i7 with 2GB RAM, listing the contents of that folder takes a long, long time. That many files in a single directory will probably just crash the Kindle outright (and if we're lucky, without causing corruption).

Here's another template if you still have too many authors in a single folder:

{tags}/{author_sort:.1}/{authors}/{series}/{title}

[NiLuJe]

Fun fact: MS did come up with something: exFAT.
Funnier fact: Almost no-one uses it, because it's patented.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Fun fact: MS did come up with something: exFAT.
Funnier fact: Almost no-one uses it, because it's patented.

Ugh. There's better support for NTFS in *nix-based systems than exFAT. On Windows, too.

I think I wanted to either move or resize an exFAT partition at one point and GParted couldn't do anything with it. Then plugged it in to Windows and nothing could be done there, either. Ended up reformatting the flash drive to NTFS.

[knc1]

One of my dislikes of how Lab126 has the Kindle system set up is that funky user space file system overlay on /mnt/us


Linux has very good support for CIFS, backed by any read/write filesystem.
They should just export /mnt/us as CIFS (A.K.A: Windows Networking).


Windows, modern Linux, and (I am guessing here) probably MAC OSx.
(and a whole lot of OS that I will not bother to list here) will just auto-detect it when the Kindle is plugged in.


Also gone are all problems with concurrent access by the Kindle's system and the external system.
That is what standard file system networking tools handle.
Amazon/Lab126 did not have to re-invent that wheel (unless they needed billable hours back in the K1 days).

[booklover6]

My Calibre send to device template is

{author_sort}/{series_index:0>3s} {series} - {title} - {authors}

Does that template cause the creation of too many folder? Every book I send creates an .sdr folder as well as the actual book file. I just added a book using the first suggested template, and it appears to create the same results. The displayed results on my kindle also appear the same.

Also, I moved a few hundred books + .sdr folders out of the main Documents folder into the "downloads" subfolders, leaving under 2000 files (+ .sdr folders) in the main Documents folder. Now I no longer get the message. At least, not from adding one book to the main documents folder.

[ilovejedd]

If you have ~2000 or more authors or if you load from both Calibre and direct download from Amazon, then quite possibly.

If most of your books are in the same tag or genre (or you don't use tags), then this template might be better.

{author_sort:.1}/{author_sort}/{series_index:0>3s} {series} - {title} - {authors}

It gives you top level A, B, C, D, ..., Z folders for your authors. That should greatly reduce the chances of hitting the 2000 item per folder limit.


That said, if you're seeing .sdr folders in the main documents folder (that were from books transferred with Calibre), it seems to me that your Send to device path below is being overridden somehow.

{author_sort}/{series_index:0>3s} {series} - {title} - {authors}

[NiLuJe]

That would imply that the books you moved were not at all following that device template?

Manually side-loaded? Downloaded on-device?

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by knc1

Linux has very good support for CIFS, backed by any read/write filesystem.
They should just export /mnt/us as CIFS (A.K.A: Windows Networking).


Windows, modern Linux, and (I am guessing here) probably MAC OSx.
(and a whole lot of OS that I will not bother to list here) will just auto-detect it when the Kindle is plugged in.

I expect Windows is the issue.

USB mass storage support is ubiquitous at this point. Meanwhile, pretty sure Windows didn't get native USB networking until Windows 8 or 10 and I wouldn't be surprised to find that Windows XP still has greater desktop market share than all desktop Linux distros combined.