Problem opening pdfs (from https://z-lib.org/)

[jacksonBrown]

all of the pdf books I have tried to open in Calibri give this error:

calibre, version 5.10.1
ERROR: Errors while adding: Failed to add any books, click "Show details" for more information


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Failed to add the book: Architects of Light Manual.pdf
/home/bronner/Calibre Library/Architects of light hanbook-1 by Ashayana deane.pdf
With error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre/gui2/add.py", line 457, in add_book
File "calibre/db/legacy.py", line 334, in create_book_entry
File "calibre/db/cache.py", line 72, in call_func_with_lock
File "calibre/db/cache.py", line 1672, in create_book_entry
File "calibre/db/backend.py", line 920, in execute
apsw.ReadOnlyError: ReadOnlyError: attempt to write a readonly database

Any way to fixt this?? thanks

[theducks]

Where is this (library) Database? Something you are trying to use is Read Only.

[DNSB]

Perhaps you should consider another source for ebooks in any format? The last time I looked, z-lib was a site for downloading illegal copies of copyrighted material.

[Dan__]

I have this problem also. Here is additional information.
1 - The pdf's open successfully in Acrobat and Preview
2 - After generating the error shown above, attempting to add the book gives a Duplicate book error.
3 - Telling Calibre to add it again generates the same error as above.
4 - the first attempt creates a folder in the library, sometimes with the author as unknown and at other times with the author's name corrupted (like adding a ; at the end)
5 - These folders are visible in the library via Finder but cannot be found by a Calibre search either for title or author.
6 - After the duplicate add, the first folder contains metadata and cover.jpg but no book. The second only contains metadata.
7 - After some diddling around I have gotten the entries to appear in search.
8 - At that point, using the add format to book and selecting the downloaded pdf, the book is successfully added to Calibre.
9 - Examining the properties of the books in Acrobat, one has all metadata fields blank and one has only the title. The one with the title was found by calibre search, the one with no metata was not found by Calibre search.
10 - If you add the title and author metata using Acrobat, the books import into Calibre with no problem.

I guess that this is the solution, unless/perhaps Calibre could contend with the case of no PDF metadata by what?, prompting for title and author or importing it with title and author set to "unknown" or "missing".

[kovidgoyal]

The error has nothing to do with the file you are adding, its an error writing to calibre's database which will happen because of either permissions ussies on the database file, filesystem corruption, or some antivirus/filesync program interfering.

[Dan__]

Ok, thanks

[Berniece McKee]

Thank you for bringing this up. After all, most of the books that I download are in pdf format. Now I will know better to open them.