Syncing across multiple computers

[Sridhar]

Hi,

I just got a new Kindle DX yesterday and am excited about Calibre, particularly for fetching newspapers and blogs. This application is cool.

I have a desktop at work (Mac Pro) that is on at all times, with Calibre running and scheduled fetch the newspapers early in the morning. I would like to do this since I don't want to keep my laptop (Macbook Pro) at home running in the night, but to be able to get up in the morning and sync my content onto my Kindle using the laptop. I have a dropbox folder synced on the two computers, where my Calibre library is. Both computers have this folder set up in the Preferences pane. So the idea is that the laptop would see what the desktop had downloaded. Hence, the latptop's only purpose is to interface with the Kindle, while the desktop's only purpose would be to download content.

The problem I have is with the metadata.db folder. When I got up this morning, I saw that my newspapers had been fetched as scheduled by Calibre on my work desktop and they are on my dropbox folder. However, they do not show up on Calibre on my laptop. Further investigation revealed that the problem lay with the metadata.db file. This was the file from last night, when I used Calibre on my laptop. I did not shut Calbre on the laptop, but the laptop was put to sleep.

The questions I have are
1. Why didn't Calibre on the desktop overwrite and update the metadata.db file? Or did my laptop Calibre overwrite the file when I started up my laptop this morning?

2. How can I make my setup work? Would it have worked in the scenario above if Calibre were shut down on my laptop last night?

Thanks for your help.

[itimpi]

I am afraid that you can only have one copy of Calibre running at a time if sharing files via DropBox. Calibre needs exclusive access to the metadata.db file while it is running, and as it keeps this file open it cannot be synced by DropBox until calibre is closed.

[Sridhar]

Thanks. A followup question. If I have a newspaper scheduled to be downloaded at 4am, will it automatically get downloaded if I open Calibre at 5am? Or does Calibre need to be running at 4am exactly for the content to be downloaded?

I ask because I don't want to keep Calibre on my laptop running at all times (actually I don't care about that, but I don't want my laptop running all night). But I don't want to manually download the content everyday. I don't see a download on start option in the scheduler.

[kovidgoyal]

As long as you start calibre at sometime on the same day, after the specified time, it will be downloaded

[Sridhar]

Thanks!