Driver problem for PRS-T2 & PRS-T3, but not PRS-T1

[DrChiper]

I normally upload books to my PRS-T1 via USB and calibre 1.38 without any problems and store them as:

<author_name>/<series> - <title>

Recently I obtained an PRS-T3, and started uploading books in the same manner. However, when I tried to make notes (bookmarks, etc) within an uploaded book the note application crashed on the T3. This happened for all newly uploaded books on the T3. However, making notes in the pre-installed example books on the T3 just worked fine, so it is not just the T3 itself.
I tried the same on an PRS-T2 with similar results.

Inspecting the books.db file on T3 revealed that for some reason with all newly uploaded books the correct MIME type string "application/epub+zip" was missing in the database. So the T3 has no idea about the book type. This has no influence for reading the books, however, it just crashes the notes application when you use it. After a crash you can still open the book and by removing the highlight marking everything is then ok again.

I tried to install manually the books in the same manner as calibre would do (actually making a verbatim copy of the book file as previously stored by calibre on the T3), safely stopped the USB connection, disconnected USB, waited until the T3 had processed the newly added books, and tried thereafter to make notes in them. This was successful on every attempt.

Repeating the same kind of upload via calibre however always causes afterwards the T3 notes application to fail when it is used.

In the books.db of the T1 the mime-type setting is also missing for the latest added books, however creating notes there is still working. This can perhaps be explained due to the fact that the firmware on the T2 & T3 is newer, perhaps stricter.

I did see some earlier postings here about something similar for the T2. So it seems something (the calibre Sony driver?) is causing the detection of newly added files to fail for the mime-type, while it is successful when everything is uploaded manually.

Does anybody has similar experiences?

[DrChiper]

Further investigation learned that all uploaded files after April 18 are affected. That means in effect the release date of calibre 1.34
I however could not find any bug fixes concerning driver updates around that time, just 1 fix for a failing cp -f issue. But that does not mean that is none as there could be a side effect from another bug fix.

[DrChiper]

The problem still bugs me. I did found this thread discussing the exact problem I did have.
To summarize:

1. removing books.db lets the PRS-T3 recreate it (I did not test T1/T2)
2. in books.db the field mime_type is now filled with "application/epub+zip" for every book (but all past annotations, etc., are now lost)
3. you can now make annotations for all present books and see them (for the current book and for all books)
4. adding books manually (via windows: creating sub-dir, copy file) provides similar results
5. but adding books via calibre (USB) results in a books.db afterwards in which field mime-type is empty for all the newely added books, so inspecting the made annotations (at least on the PRS-T2/T3, the T1 does not seems to mind it) result in a crash: "Sorry! The application Reader has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Force close."

I tried several PRS-T1 driver settings/unsettings, old book files / newly edited book files, but nothing seems to work. But it had worked in the past up to april 18, 2014, as the books.db revealed on both my PRS-T1 & T2.

Go figure

[kovidgoyal]

Since the person that maintains this driver (Kolenka) is no longer active and I dont have this device, it is a little hard to debug. Looking at the code, as best as I can tell, the calibre driver creates the mimetype in the books table in books.db. It is set to whatever mimetype is guessed from the file extension for the file on the device.

See https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...driver.py#L478

What is present in the mime_type column in the books table for books uplaoded by calibre?

[DrChiper]

Welcom back Kovid, trust you had a good holiday?

It is indeed somewhere in the code: see the metadata.calibre contents:

    ], 
    "timestamp": "2011-04-28T14:41:04+00:00", 
    "last_modified": "2014-04-24T13:25:59+00:00", 
    "mime": null, 
    "authors": [
      "Kovid Goyal"
    ],

The reason that it "seems" to work sometimes is when the PRS-Tx recreates the books.db file (by removing the books.db, or via a hard reset), after which all entries are filled with the correct values.

But when you add new books you get the situation as depicted below.
And this is the case for long before the April 18th I mentioned earlier, at least in 2013 as I discovered after inspecting the old metadata.calibre file on my Nexus.

It does not break making annotations on the T1 (which is still my main reader), but it does on the T2/T3 which may have pickier new software

[DrChiper]

Concerning the code, I can read Python, but I have no time or the means to setup a development environment and to understand the inner works of calibre.
I will however gladly help you with testing any fixes to resolve this annoying problem.

[kovidgoyal]

mime has always been null in metadata.calibre that has nothing to do with this problem. In any case, the fix is pretty simple, assuming the mimetype is indeed the cause of the problem: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...cb0f797f901ddf

[DrChiper]

That was a quick fix!

Ok, so what is reported in metadata.calibre is different from what is actual written in books.db by calibre.

Then I test tomorrow whether it is sufficient for T1/T2/T3 to make the annotations work again. Thanks!

[kovidgoyal]

There most probably will not be a release tomorrow.

[DrChiper]

I knew it was too good to be true ...

[DrChiper]

Problem solved. Annotation works now for every added book on T1/T2/T3.