Calibre & Dropbox and 2 computers????

[jekoby]

I have a desk top and a laptop computer - both running Vista Home Premium. I have Calibre and Dropbox on both. My Calibre library is on/in Dropbox. If I add a book into Calibre on my lap top computer, it will show up in Calibre on my desk top when I open it. But, if I add a book into Calibre on my desk top computer, it will not show up in Calibre when I open it on my lap top.

I close Calibre (from the system tray) on one computer before opening it on the other. I don't know what to try next.

Can anyone help me figure out why it's not picking up the new books on the laptop?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by jekoby

I have a desk top and a laptop computer - both running Vista Home Premium. I have Calibre and Dropbox on both. My Calibre library is on/in Dropbox. If I add a book into Calibre on my lap top computer, it will show up in Calibre on my desk top when I open it. But, if I add a book into Calibre on my desk top computer, it will not show up in Calibre when I open it on my lap top.

I close Calibre (from the system tray) on one computer before opening it on the other. I don't know what to try next.

Since you have the "only running one copy of calibre at a time" thing down then it is just a matter of timing.

When you are on your laptop updating books in calibre, I'm betting your desktop is running and Dropbox is actively syncing files so by the time you open calibre on your desktop the files have already been synced.

But when you switch from your desktop to your laptop you most likely have to power up your laptop. This means the the files you updated on your desktop are not synced yet. After starting up your laptop wait until Dropbox indicates all files up to date (this can take some time after initial start-up) prior to opening calibre. If you open calibre before the files are updated the fact that you are running calibre will prevent Dropbox from updating the files.

Remember to wait to run any program that you want synced with Dropbox for Dropbox to fully sync prior to opening the program otherwise problems will arise.

It is just a matter of timing.

[jekoby]

Thank you for the response! I am not sure what I was doing to mess it up, but I went through the steps "slowly" and watched to make sure that I got the message that the files were up to date on both the desk top and the laptop, then opened Calibre on the laptop and the book was there! Yea!

I'm guessing that I really have to pay attention to that, because I was having trouble even keeping the book I was experimenting with in the original Calibre (desk top). I loaded it & fixed the meta data on it a couple of mornings ago and put it on my Kindle - but when I opened Calibre tonight, it wasn't there (though the file is in the Calibre library). So I loaded again it again & closed Calibre - still was gone when I re-opened it. I did that several times - then finally it worked and stayed there. Then - after closing & exiting Calibre and waiting for the files to be completely up to date - when I opened Calibre on my laptop, the book was there. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong - but from now on I'll pay more attention to the opening/closing of the program(s) and waiting.

Thanks again for your help.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by jekoby

I'm guessing that I really have to pay attention to that, because I was having trouble even keeping the book I was experimenting with in the original Calibre (desk top). I loaded it & fixed the meta data on it a couple of mornings ago and put it on my Kindle - but when I opened Calibre tonight, it wasn't there (though the file is in the Calibre library).

I forgot that last bit, before you shutdown your machine make sure you exit out of calibre and give Dropbox enough time to sync the metedata.db file up to the Dropbox. Calibre locks that file and that is where all of your metadata is written to. It is possible to exit calibre and shutdown the computer before Dropbox has a chance to update the file.

I have been using one of Dropbox's experimental builds version 0.8.91 and it seems to update the metadata.db file every time it changes even if it is use.