Uber Calibre script - ubuntu

[sam_uk]

Hi all

I am new to ebooks. I have got a 'mess' of ebook files on my hardrive, different formats, some compressed, some in a folder directory structure, some by author, some by title.

I was hoping someone might have a script that

1) Recursively extracts all tarred files [ find ./ -name '*.rar' -exec unrar e -o+ {} \; ]

2) Organises those files into a single flat directory [ find . -type f -exec mv '{}' . \; ]

3) Removes duplicates [ yes 1 | fdupes -rd . ]

4) Deletes .rar files (space saving) [ find -name "*.rar" -delete ]

5) Copies all epub files to a new folder called 'calibre' or similar

6) Coverts all the remaining .pdf .txt etc files to .epub and moves them to 'calibre' folder

7) Sorts resulting folder alphabetically

8) Goes and grabs the cover art from the internet

9) Makes me a cup of tea whilst it completes!

Not much to ask!

Any pointers or part-solutions welcomed..

Thanks

Sam

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by sam_uk

I have got a 'mess' of ebook files on my hardrive, different formats, some compressed, some in a folder directory structure, some by author, some by title.

I had that mess when I started with Calibre.

I was hoping someone might have a script that

Not a script, but I did write some functions into Calibre that will help.

1) Recursively extracts all tarred files [ find ./ -name '*.rar' -exec unrar e -o+ {} \; ]

Calibre reads *.rar and *.zip files and extracts embedded ebooks.

2) Organises those files into a single flat directory [ find . -type f -exec mv '{}' . \; ]

Why? Calibre doesn't care where they are.

3) Removes duplicates [ yes 1 | fdupes -rd . ]

Turn on the Automerge function. Duplicate authors with near duplicate (fuzzy matched) titles are ignored if it's the same format.

4) Copies all epub files to a new folder called 'calibre' or similar

Why?

5) Coverts all the remaining .pdf .txt etc files to .epub and moves them to 'calibre' folder

Global; conversions usually suck, but you can do it easily enough inside Calibre after import.

6) Sorts resulting folder alphabetically

Sort however you like in Calibre, after import.

7) Goes and grabs the cover art from the internet

Calibre will do it globally.

8) Makes me a cup of tea whilst it completes!

Nope - sorry

[sam_uk]

Great thanks for the responses! Seems like I just need to play around some more.

Could you clarify a couple of things?

I am indexing *lots of Gigs of ebooks with calibre. Does it basically copy every file?

I have separate partitions:

/
/home

As Calibre indexes this content I can see space disappearing in my / (system/ root) partition. What is it doing here?

Thanks

Sam

[Manichean]

Calibre copies books added to the library into the library folder you specified (which, by the way, should be totally empty when you start your libary, it's a bad idea to select a folder with books already in it). If your library is somewhere on your root partition, you'll see the free space being taken up by Calibre's copies of your books.

[sam_uk]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Calibre copies books added to the library into the library folder you specified (which, by the way, should be totally empty when you start your libary, it's a bad idea to select a folder with books already in it). If your library is somewhere on your root partition, you'll see the free space being taken up by Calibre's copies of your books.

My library folder was empty when I started. It is on my /home directory.

Is there a command line option I can run to delete the original files as it runs? I do not have enough hard drive space to duplicate the entire collection.

Is there also a way to limit the RAM that Calibre uses? It is using 100% of 2Gigs on Ubuntu which means I cannot run the import as a background process..

Thanks

Sam

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by sam_uk

My library folder was empty when I started. It is on my /home directory.

Good, I wrote that just to be on the safe side
Edit to add: Wait, you said your /home is on another partition, and free space on / is shrinking? Then this is not caused by Calibre adding the files to the library. Might be temporary files?

Is there a command line option I can run to delete the original files as it runs? I do not have enough hard drive space to duplicate the entire collection.

No. You could create a script that first adds the book to the Calibre library via the CLI tools and then deletes the file, though. Or you could just add smaller batches to the GUI (you should be doing that anyway) and manually delete the books afterwards.

Is there also a way to limit the RAM that Calibre uses? It is using 100% of 2Gigs on Ubuntu which means I cannot run the import as a background process..

I don't think there is a way.

[sam_uk]

calibredb add -r .

Seemed to be a better way of adding stuff to the library. It did not use all the ram which was nice.

[user_none]

The space you're seeing used in / is temporary files. They are typically only deleted when calibre quits.

There is no way to limit RAM usage. calibe will use as much as it needs / can to complete the task as quick as possible.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Calibre reads *.rar and *.zip files and extracts embedded ebooks.

I may be wrong but I believe calibre only expects one book per archive. If there is more then one book in the file only one gets added.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I may be wrong but I believe calibre only expects one book per archive. If there is more then one book in the file only one gets added.

Correct. The "ebooks" are extracted from their corresponding "files".