Calibre library locked when reading from virtual machine

[craigf48]

Hi,

I've re-built my machine with a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit. Before this I was running Windows XP and had Calibre installed and had my library working fine, great.

I've created a virtual machine using VMware Player, installed Windows7 64 bit and Calibre on that. Why? I'm using a virtual machine for any non-critical software so that next time I upgrade I can just copy it over instead of re-installing thousands of programs.

Anyway, I've installed Calibre on the virtual machine and am trying to use the Switch/Create Library option. As soon as I point to my old library on my host machine it says:

The library database at <location> appears to be corrupted.

Dump of the details

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\ui.py", line 489, in library_moved
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 220, in __init__
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 329, in initialize_dynamic
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 314, in run
DatabaseException: attempt to write a readonly database
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 271, in run
OperationalError: attempt to write a readonly database

It then asks if you want to try and rebuild. I said yes. Next error:

calibre, version 0.8.26
ERROR: Failed: Restoring database failed, click Show details to see details

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\restore.py", line 108, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\restore.py", line 245, in replace_db
WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

So it appears to be failing due to this read only business, however the only lock on the file is the one created by Calibre itself (although I can't verify this for sure). It has full permissions (I set the user 'Everyone' to full control on the folder). I've made sure that everything in that folder is not read only. As a test I've renamed the metadata.dt file then named it back again to make sure it can be changed.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks

[itimpi]

How are you setting up the VM to point to the library? I have no problem if I do it by creating a share on the host and then use the (virtual) network and using the "map drive" option to assign a letter to the share. Doing it any other way can cause problems due to limitations on the OS calls supported for accessing the file.

Also you must make certain that you do not have another copy of calibre accessing the library - calibre only supports single user access to its database.

[craigf48]

Awesome, that fixed it. Mapping a drive within the guest solved it.

Thank you itimpi