Issues with Library after folder move

Juzzybear · 01-12-2020, 06:12 AM

Hi, first time here, so unsure if this is the right location to post this.

I recently got a NAS device and moved all my books to the device and pointed Calibre at it.

The device is accessible from my computer with full privileges and I can read/write/create, etc. I've even started Calibre with Admin privileges.

However, I am getting an issue when I perform any action on the new database. For example, if I try and add a new book, i get this error (see below). It actually does add the book, but this issue keeps coming up. If I convert, it does the convert, but then I get the same error popping up.

I've tried library maintenance and fixed any issues known, but no joy.

Can anyone help with this?

Thanks, J

Quote:

calibre, version 4.8.0
ERROR: Errors while adding: Failed to add any books, click "Show details" for more information

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Failed to add the book: Stop Motion Magazine 02 Octobe
C:\Users\jhjsh\Downloads\Stop Motion Magazine 02_ Octobe - John Ikuma.pdf
With error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\add.py", line 414, in add_book
File "site-packages\calibre\db\legacy.py", line 225, in create_book_entry
File "site-packages\calibre\db\cache.py", line 62, in call_func_with_lock
File "site-packages\calibre\db\cache.py", line 1590, in create_book_entry
File "site-packages\calibre\db\cache.py", line 1310, in set_metadata
File "site-packages\calibre\db\cache.py", line 1136, in update_path
File "site-packages\calibre\db\backend.py", line 1606, in update_path
File "site-packages\calibre\db\tables.py", line 137, in set_path
File "site-packages\calibre\db\backend.py", line 874, in execute
File "c:\t\t\apsw-nhrdandw\src\cursor.c", line 236, in resetcursor
CantOpenError: CantOpenError: unable to open database file

stumped · 01-12-2020, 07:26 AM

a forum search should break the bad news...
calibre is not designed to work on NAS and errors like that are what will happen
hope you kept the receipt

by all means have a mirrored copy on NAS but do your adds and edits on a local drive
same goes for any cloud drive you may be considering.

I am not aware of any future plans to make calibre play nice with NAS, but I could be wrong

theducks · 01-12-2020, 10:46 AM

It is mostly about TIMING, so the only way I could see the current structure of Calibre 'playing nice', is to slow it way down.

Things have to happen in order. NAS/share operations are typically buffered at either end to make performance faster (but not necessarily as requested).

If you did ever peek (Never touch), you see 1 or more folders must be created when you add a book to calibre

Authors / Title (id) + OPF file + cover file / format(s) file
and the metadata DB entries

(I do not know the exact order, but obviously the folders need to be there to put something into them

. Buffering can delay one of those steps )

stumped · 01-12-2020, 11:00 AM

more poking around does bring up some suggested workarounds, where you park almost all of the library out on a network and do cute stuff with sym links and env. variables.
but it the author's own FAQ( near the end) it explicitly says do not run calibre on a NAS.
( he's much too polite to say "and don't come crying to me if you do, and it all goes pear shaped" but that's sort of implied

)

feel free to google away and also search the forum if you want to get deeper into the technicalities of why it goes wrong and what may alleviate it. Personally i would not risk it, but my own modest library fits Ok on my SSD C: Drive, so I don't need to

Juzzybear · 01-13-2020, 02:36 AM

Thanks for all the replies.

stumped · 01-13-2020, 03:26 AM

if you do try one of the technical work-arounds please keep us posted of that you try and whether it works.
also what make/model of NAS are you using ?

theducks · 01-13-2020, 10:27 AM

And remember. Just because you got it to work
and it was working 'YESTERDAY'. Does not mean it will work (reliably) 'Tomorrow'. It will probably be FRAGILE. One little change, ANYWHERE in the system (PC-Network-NAS) and it breaks. WITH NO NOTICE (if you are unlucky enough).

stumped · 01-13-2020, 10:31 AM

The little read around I did, and I should probably emphasis Little, suggested that if you can ensure metadata.db is on a local drive, the other stuff May just work.

Little...May... Are disclaimers. Don't try this at home folks, without taking necessary precautions - lots of backups

A am mildly surprised there is no plug in or approved tweak that safely pushes out only what can safely be pushed to a network location of your choice, and creates all the necessary SIM links or whatever.

A bit like what I did with alll my music , using a crib sheet, when i got my first very small small ssd system drive, so that all the indexing used by other programs still worked

Partly, I used freeware called steammover, which was designed to move large pc games and create sym links, thus fooling the steam client, but it works with anything you need to rehome on a different drive

theducks · 01-13-2020, 11:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stumped

A am mildly surprised there is no plug in or approved tweak that safely pushes out only what can safely be pushed to a network location of your choice, and creates all the necessary SIM links or whatever.

I am a bit surprised there is not API tools to control (start/stop) common cloud apps that could be built into products that are sensitive.
App starts up->detects cloud sync active on its needed resources-> signals it to Pause - does its thing -resumes sync, upon shutdown (or safe area)

stumped · 01-13-2020, 01:59 PM

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...opbox-with-api

Says here (2018), can't be done

theducks · 01-13-2020, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stumped

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...opbox-with-api

Says here (2018), can't be done

Pity, this is kind of (locking) thing (and has been) an issue for decades.

I switched from a Net Use (W3.11 and DOS 6) to Netware 4.2 for my Paradox DOS Database because it had locking that worked flawlessly (as well as the server, just ran in the corner for weeks without any user help)

ilovejedd · 01-13-2020, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

I switched from a Net Use (W3.11 and DOS 6) to Netware 4.2 for my Paradox DOS Database because it had locking that worked flawlessly (as well as the server, just ran in the corner for weeks without any user help)

Lol, techs at the office were upgrading the PCs to Windows 10/Office 2019 and I just received blank stares when I mentioned needing to be able to import from Paradox.

theducks · 01-13-2020, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Lol, techs at the office were upgrading the PCs to Windows 10/Office 2019 and I just received blank stares when I mentioned needing to be able to import from Paradox.

Borland! Who is that? I think the only file format still around that it could Export is CSX, but it may do XLS (the original version). I do have it on my XP laptop if you need files exported

Gary_M_Mugford · 01-14-2020, 06:47 AM

Back in the day, the friendly folks at Borland said we couldn't have a peer-to-peer network with Paradox. Well, I cobbled together Paradox and Lantastic and sort of disagreed with them. They basically said, "Wait and see ..." Well, I didn't. I called in Henrik Bechmann who was one of the bigger names in the field at the time and HE spread the developmental group around to include people in the US, Australia and more here in Canada. At this point, I was just the guy with the original idea. But what emerged was what Borland said could NOT be done ... a peer-to-peer network with Paradox DOS. I'd added some piece work-at-home capability and the little company here really became good enough at entering in warranties for a particular company, adding cheating detection and narrowing the area where the product needed toughening to warrant adding the extra cost, that we ended up with the American business too, which increased the company's profit ten-fold. It was delightful working with the TRUE Borland experts. Learned a lot.

The sad thing is that Paradox, which had been rock solid for a quarter-century, got broken badly by the Fall 2017 Windows 10 Update. REALLY broken. It was almost like Microsoft took one last shot at their once fierce programming language competitor and said, "Take that Borland. Er Codegear. Err Embarcadero!" And I'm missing a few more intermediary names at that. And today, Microsoft says something similar to it's Windows 7 users. Sad. Really Sad.

01-12-2020, 10:46 AM	#3
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	It is mostly about TIMING, so the only way I could see the current structure of Calibre 'playing nice', is to slow it way down. <the screams heard round the world: NOOOOOOOOOOOO > Things have to happen in order. NAS/share operations are typically buffered at either end to make performance faster (but not necessarily as requested). If you did ever peek (Never touch), you see 1 or more folders must be created when you add a book to calibre Authors / Title (id) + OPF file + cover file / format(s) file and the metadata DB entries (I do not know the exact order, but obviously the folders need to be there to put something into them . Buffering can delay one of those steps )

01-13-2020, 10:31 AM	#8
stumped Wizard Posts: 3,305 Karma: 10259306 Join Date: May 2016 Device: kobo forma, Kobo Libra, Huawei media Tab, fire HD10, PW3 HDX8.9,	The little read around I did, and I should probably emphasis Little, suggested that if you can ensure metadata.db is on a local drive, the other stuff May just work. Little...May... Are disclaimers. Don't try this at home folks, without taking necessary precautions - lots of backups A am mildly surprised there is no plug in or approved tweak that safely pushes out only what can safely be pushed to a network location of your choice, and creates all the necessary SIM links or whatever. A bit like what I did with alll my music , using a crib sheet, when i got my first very small small ssd system drive, so that all the indexing used by other programs still worked Partly, I used freeware called steammover, which was designed to move large pc games and create sym links, thus fooling the steam client, but it works with anything you need to rehome on a different drive Last edited by stumped; 01-13-2020 at 10:38 AM.

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01-12-2020, 07:26 AM	#2
stumped Wizard Posts: 3,305 Karma: 10259306 Join Date: May 2016 Device: kobo forma, Kobo Libra, Huawei media Tab, fire HD10, PW3 HDX8.9,	a forum search should break the bad news... calibre is not designed to work on NAS and errors like that are what will happen hope you kept the receipt by all means have a mirrored copy on NAS but do your adds and edits on a local drive same goes for any cloud drive you may be considering. I am not aware of any future plans to make calibre play nice with NAS, but I could be wrong

01-12-2020, 11:00 AM	#4
stumped Wizard Posts: 3,305 Karma: 10259306 Join Date: May 2016 Device: kobo forma, Kobo Libra, Huawei media Tab, fire HD10, PW3 HDX8.9,	more poking around does bring up some suggested workarounds, where you park almost all of the library out on a network and do cute stuff with sym links and env. variables. but it the author's own FAQ( near the end) it explicitly says do not run calibre on a NAS. ( he's much too polite to say "and don't come crying to me if you do, and it all goes pear shaped" but that's sort of implied ) feel free to google away and also search the forum if you want to get deeper into the technicalities of why it goes wrong and what may alleviate it. Personally i would not risk it, but my own modest library fits Ok on my SSD C: Drive, so I don't need to

01-13-2020, 02:36 AM	#5
Juzzybear Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2020 Device: Kindle	Thanks for all the replies.

01-13-2020, 03:26 AM	#6
stumped Wizard Posts: 3,305 Karma: 10259306 Join Date: May 2016 Device: kobo forma, Kobo Libra, Huawei media Tab, fire HD10, PW3 HDX8.9,	if you do try one of the technical work-arounds please keep us posted of that you try and whether it works. also what make/model of NAS are you using ?

01-13-2020, 10:27 AM	#7
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	And remember. Just because you got it to work and it was working 'YESTERDAY'. Does not mean it will work (reliably) 'Tomorrow'. It will probably be FRAGILE. One little change, ANYWHERE in the system (PC-Network-NAS) and it breaks. WITH NO NOTICE (if you are unlucky enough).

01-13-2020, 01:59 PM	#10
stumped Wizard Posts: 3,305 Karma: 10259306 Join Date: May 2016 Device: kobo forma, Kobo Libra, Huawei media Tab, fire HD10, PW3 HDX8.9,	https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...opbox-with-api Says here (2018), can't be done

01-14-2020, 06:47 AM	#14
Gary_M_Mugford Groupie Posts: 180 Karma: 299 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Brampton ON Device: Kobo, Kindle3	Back in the day, the friendly folks at Borland said we couldn't have a peer-to-peer network with Paradox. Well, I cobbled together Paradox and Lantastic and sort of disagreed with them. They basically said, "Wait and see ..." Well, I didn't. I called in Henrik Bechmann who was one of the bigger names in the field at the time and HE spread the developmental group around to include people in the US, Australia and more here in Canada. At this point, I was just the guy with the original idea. But what emerged was what Borland said could NOT be done ... a peer-to-peer network with Paradox DOS. I'd added some piece work-at-home capability and the little company here really became good enough at entering in warranties for a particular company, adding cheating detection and narrowing the area where the product needed toughening to warrant adding the extra cost, that we ended up with the American business too, which increased the company's profit ten-fold. It was delightful working with the TRUE Borland experts. Learned a lot. The sad thing is that Paradox, which had been rock solid for a quarter-century, got broken badly by the Fall 2017 Windows 10 Update. REALLY broken. It was almost like Microsoft took one last shot at their once fierce programming language competitor and said, "Take that Borland. Er Codegear. Err Embarcadero!" And I'm missing a few more intermediary names at that. And today, Microsoft says something similar to it's Windows 7 users. Sad. Really Sad.