Books not showing as on "Device"

Sweetpea · 10-15-2018, 09:43 AM

No idea how to make the header better, so here's the long version...

No idea what happened, but Calibre isn't showing which books are on my device anymore. Or rather, it's not showing most books.

I have a Kobo Aura One, and I wanted to replace a few books (fixed some errors in Calibre). So, I plugged in my Kobo, started Calibre and... according to Calibre, I didn't have those books on my reader! I most certainly have them, I can open them on my device, I can see them in the file explorer. But Calibre thinks I only have a handful of books on there.

Is there a way to rebuild the [no idea what] Calibre uses to keep track on which books are on my device, without having to replace every single book?

It's not that I can't read my books now, it's just annoying if I want to replace books and especially if I want to sync things like date read and progress...

theducks · 10-15-2018, 10:29 AM

Were the missing books bought (from the Kobo store) direct to device? They may be in protected (from you

) storage

metadata.calibre (on the device:root) contains the results of the scan and updates. Delete that the launch Calibre and be prepared to wait out a complete device scan
(leave the other calibre file, it has the devices ID, used when multiple systems connect)

Sweetpea · 10-16-2018, 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Were the missing books bought (from the Kobo store) direct to device? They may be in protected (from you

) storage

No, I never have wifi on, all my books are put there by Calibre.

Quote:

metadata.calibre (on the device:root) contains the results of the scan and updates. Delete that the launch Calibre and be prepared to wait out a complete device scan
(leave the other calibre file, it has the devices ID, used when multiple systems connect)

Ok, I'll try that.

Sweetpea · 10-17-2018, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Delete that the launch Calibre and be prepared to wait out a complete device scan

Nope, didn't work. I removed the file, started Calibre and it still shows the same books as it did before I removed the file...

I also tried something. I uploaded a book again (that I already have on the device, so it was overwritten), closed Calibre, deleted the file again, started Calibre and it again came back with exactly the same list as before, excluding the book I had just put on my device!

so, it looks like I'll have to re-copy all my books again...

theducks · 10-17-2018, 04:03 PM

Calibre updates that file when you use Calibre to Add or Delete. On rare occasions, it can become corrupt (usually yanking the USB before 'Safe to Remove') .

The other, would be those that use the device to move the locations of books from where Calibre last found them.

That should be the only times you need to force a rescan by removing that file

davidfor · 10-17-2018, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Nope, didn't work. I removed the file, started Calibre and it still shows the same books as it did before I removed the file...

I also tried something. I uploaded a book again (that I already have on the device, so it was overwritten), closed Calibre, deleted the file again, started Calibre and it again came back with exactly the same list as before, excluding the book I had just put on my device!

so, it looks like I'll have to re-copy all my books again...

You shouldn't have to do this. Calibre attempts to match what is on the device with what is in the library each time the device is connected. It should record these matches in the metadata.calibre file that @theducks mentioned, but if the matching fails for some reason, that won't change.

Can you check a calibre preference? On the "Sending books to devices" page of the preferences, can you check what the "Metadata management" option is set to? In general, using the automatic option works better with the Kobo devices. But, I just can't remember exactly how this option affect this.

In general, the books are matched using the author and title. If these are different on the device to what is in the library, then the books won't match. There is a problem with Kobo devices for books with multiple authors. Kobo doesn't like the way that calibre normally puts these in the metadata and usually only shows one author. That means these don't match. You can use a metadata plugboard to fix this. The matching also doesn't work as well if you send the author as "LN, FN" or use the title_sort rather than the title.

You can manually match books using the Device list. Select an unmatched book, right click and select the option to match, search for the book, select it and then press OK. After doing this, you need to use the "Update cached metadata on device" function that is in the menu of the device button. You won't want to do this if you have a lot of unmatched books, but, it is the simplest solution for a few.

Sweetpea · 10-18-2018, 02:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

You shouldn't have to do this. Calibre attempts to match what is on the device with what is in the library each time the device is connected. It should record these matches in the metadata.calibre file that @theducks mentioned, but if the matching fails for some reason, that won't change.

Can you check a calibre preference? On the "Sending books to devices" page of the preferences, can you check what the "Metadata management" option is set to? In general, using the automatic option works better with the Kobo devices. But, I just can't remember exactly how this option affect this.

In general, the books are matched using the author and title. If these are different on the device to what is in the library, then the books won't match. There is a problem with Kobo devices for books with multiple authors. Kobo doesn't like the way that calibre normally puts these in the metadata and usually only shows one author. That means these don't match. You can use a metadata plugboard to fix this. The matching also doesn't work as well if you send the author as "LN, FN" or use the title_sort rather than the title.

You can manually match books using the Device list. Select an unmatched book, right click and select the option to match, search for the book, select it and then press OK. After doing this, you need to use the "Update cached metadata on device" function that is in the menu of the device button. You won't want to do this if you have a lot of unmatched books, but, it is the simplest solution for a few.

I've been using Calibre ever since I got my Sony and I know how it works... But not what to do when it doesn't work anymore. I didn't change anything in Calibre, it finds about 40 or 50 books on my reader, even after I delete that metadata file. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. For example, one book of a series can be found, the rest not, while the rest has exactly the same format in filename as the first...

Looks like I'll have to rematch all my books, or upload them all again (probably do a combination, so I can hopefullly get the Kobo metadata, like reading position and date last read again in my Calibre DB...)

davidfor · 10-18-2018, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I've been using Calibre ever since I got my Sony and I know how it works... But not what to do when it doesn't work anymore. I didn't change anything in Calibre,

But, it is a good idea to check the configuration, just in case.

Quote:

it finds about 40 or 50 books on my reader, even after I delete that metadata file. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. For example, one book of a series can be found, the rest not, while the rest has exactly the same format in filename as the first...

The file name doesn't matter. The matching is between the metadata in the database on the device and the metadata in the library. The filename can be used as a fallback if the book on the device doesn't have metadata, but that isn't going to happen with the KoboTouch driver.

Quote:

Looks like I'll have to rematch all my books, or upload them all again (probably do a combination, so I can hopefullly get the Kobo metadata, like reading position and date last read again in my Calibre DB...)

I don't know what is happening. If the books are shown in the library on the device, then calibre should display them in the device list. And it should then match them. As a test, I removed the metadata.calibre from one of my devices. This has 599 books on it. Most were downloaded directly from Kobo. Calibre was able 490 of them. The ones that didn't match were the ones I didn't expect. These are books where the title Kobo has is different to what most of the metadata sources have. Or where they include the series name as part of the title.

That should happen unless there is an error happening along the way.

Sweetpea · 10-18-2018, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, it is a good idea to check the configuration, just in case.

It is on automatic.

Quote:

I don't know what is happening. If the books are shown in the library on the device, then calibre should display them in the device list. And it should then match them. As a test, I removed the metadata.calibre from one of my devices. This has 599 books on it. Most were downloaded directly from Kobo. Calibre was able 490 of them. The ones that didn't match were the ones I didn't expect. These are books where the title Kobo has is different to what most of the metadata sources have. Or where they include the series name as part of the title.

That should happen unless there is an error happening along the way.

Yes, this is indeed weird... The books are on my device and they all come from Calibre (I never download, only side-load, using Calibre) so they're also all in my library. I do use a naming template (I add the series number in front of the title, in case a book is part of series, and a version number, which is a custom column in my Calibre db). Based on what you say, and what was said earlier, no books should be found (as the versioning is always part of the filename) or only the non-series books should be found (series number in the title). The fact that there are series where one book can be found and not the other, and non-series books that also only have the version nummer added cannot be found, is weird!

ilovejedd · 10-18-2018, 10:02 AM

Since you mentioned series, do you use metadata plugboards to add the series info to title?

davidfor · 10-18-2018, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Since you mentioned series, do you use metadata plugboards to add the series info to title?

No. The Kobo devices show the series info, sort on series and search it, so I don't see the point in putting it in the title.

And when Kobo finally give in to my very polite requests for a series list, I'll be very happy. Though I'm sure I'll quickly find something else to complain about.

tratatata · 10-19-2018, 04:52 AM

I may have the same problem. The issue for me is that the calibre doesn't list all the books on the "Device" window, so I can't manually match the books, and some books are only on my kobo, but not in my calibre database, but this should not matter (or maybe it does?), calibre still should see all the books on kobo.

And just deleting books from kobo and reuploading won't work, because all new uploaded books won't appear on "Device" window when you reconnect kobo.

This problem occurs to me a second time. Both times after I used fresh calibre installation with a new database (the books were uploaded with my previous calibre installation), I did not bother with backups as I don't have that many books or a proper database, I just add a book to calibre and upload to my kobo as I need. I could not figure it out the first time so I just reset my kobo and that fixed the problem, but this is not ideal solution.

davidfor · 10-19-2018, 06:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tratatata

I may have the same problem. The issue for me is that the calibre doesn't list all the books on the "Device" window, so I can't manually match the books, and some books are only on my kobo, but not in my calibre database, but this should not matter (or maybe it does?), calibre still should see all the books on kobo.

The KoboTouch driver only looks at the database when looking for books. It does check that the books found in the database are on the device, but it doesn't scan for other. This is a deliberate design choice as any books not in the database are unusable by the device until they are imported.

Quote:

And just deleting books from kobo and reuploading won't work, because all new uploaded books won't appear on "Device" window when you reconnect kobo.

The real question here is were the books imported into the library on the device? If they weren't, then there is a problem. It usually means there is an error in the book that broke the import. And when that happens any books still not imported will be skipped.

If the books are in the library on the device, and not in the device list. It usually means there was an error during the connection. And that needs to be investigated.

Quote:

This problem occurs to me a second time. Both times after I used fresh calibre installation with a new database (the books were uploaded with my previous calibre installation), I did not bother with backups as I don't have that many books or a proper database, I just add a book to calibre and upload to my kobo as I need. I could not figure it out the first time so I just reset my kobo and that fixed the problem, but this is not ideal solution.

You can automate the database backup with my Kobo Utilities plugin. If the database becomes corrupted, you can restore it and avoid needing to do any sort of reset.

Sweetpea · 10-19-2018, 02:09 PM

I decided to do a complete factory reset (that got rid of that annoying "your drive is corrupt!" which didn't want to get away otherwise, not even after scanning...). I just couldn't get it to work anymore. Even a book I had just placed on it, couldn't be found when I restarted Calibre... Apparently my database (even though I have set it to backup once a day) wasn't backed up...

davidfor · 10-19-2018, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I decided to do a complete factory reset (that got rid of that annoying "your drive is corrupt!" which didn't want to get away otherwise, not even after scanning...).

I get that from time to time, but I don't think Windows has ever claimed to have found an error.

Quote:

I just couldn't get it to work anymore. Even a book I had just placed on it, couldn't be found when I restarted Calibre... Apparently my database (even though I have set it to backup once a day) wasn't backed up...

If the database isn't being backed up, then it usually means the database is corrupt. But, you should get an error message showing this. The only other reason I can think of is if the plugin wasn't identifying the device properly. If you are using device specific options, then it it uses an id in the driveinfo.calibre file. If that gets recreated, it will have a different id in it, and won't be seen as the same device. It should really use the device serial number, but I haven't gotten around to changing it.

10-15-2018, 09:43 AM	#1
Sweetpea Grand Sorcerer Posts: 9,707 Karma: 32763414 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Krewerd Device: Pocketbook Inkpad 4 Color; Samsung Galaxy Tab S6	Books not showing as on "Device" No idea how to make the header better, so here's the long version... No idea what happened, but Calibre isn't showing which books are on my device anymore. Or rather, it's not showing most books. I have a Kobo Aura One, and I wanted to replace a few books (fixed some errors in Calibre). So, I plugged in my Kobo, started Calibre and... according to Calibre, I didn't have those books on my reader! I most certainly have them, I can open them on my device, I can see them in the file explorer. But Calibre thinks I only have a handful of books on there. Is there a way to rebuild the [no idea what] Calibre uses to keep track on which books are on my device, without having to replace every single book? It's not that I can't read my books now, it's just annoying if I want to replace books and especially if I want to sync things like date read and progress...

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10-15-2018, 10:29 AM	#2
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,800 Karma: 54830978 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Were the missing books bought (from the Kobo store) direct to device? They may be in protected (from you ) storage metadata.calibre (on the device:root) contains the results of the scan and updates. Delete that the launch Calibre and be prepared to wait out a complete device scan (leave the other calibre file, it has the devices ID, used when multiple systems connect)

10-17-2018, 04:03 PM	#5
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,800 Karma: 54830978 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Calibre updates that file when you use Calibre to Add or Delete. On rare occasions, it can become corrupt (usually yanking the USB before 'Safe to Remove') . The other, would be those that use the device to move the locations of books from where Calibre last found them. That should be the only times you need to force a rescan by removing that file

10-18-2018, 10:02 AM	#10
ilovejedd hopeless n00b Posts: 5,111 Karma: 19597086 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: in the middle of nowhere Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9	Since you mentioned series, do you use metadata plugboards to add the series info to title?

10-19-2018, 04:52 AM	#12
tratatata Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2018 Device: Kobo Glo HD	I may have the same problem. The issue for me is that the calibre doesn't list all the books on the "Device" window, so I can't manually match the books, and some books are only on my kobo, but not in my calibre database, but this should not matter (or maybe it does?), calibre still should see all the books on kobo. And just deleting books from kobo and reuploading won't work, because all new uploaded books won't appear on "Device" window when you reconnect kobo. This problem occurs to me a second time. Both times after I used fresh calibre installation with a new database (the books were uploaded with my previous calibre installation), I did not bother with backups as I don't have that many books or a proper database, I just add a book to calibre and upload to my kobo as I need. I could not figure it out the first time so I just reset my kobo and that fixed the problem, but this is not ideal solution.

10-19-2018, 02:09 PM	#14
Sweetpea Grand Sorcerer Posts: 9,707 Karma: 32763414 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Krewerd Device: Pocketbook Inkpad 4 Color; Samsung Galaxy Tab S6	I decided to do a complete factory reset (that got rid of that annoying "your drive is corrupt!" which didn't want to get away otherwise, not even after scanning...). I just couldn't get it to work anymore. Even a book I had just placed on it, couldn't be found when I restarted Calibre... Apparently my database (even though I have set it to backup once a day) wasn't backed up...

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