Calibre 1.29 Keeps Freezing When Opening Ebooks

[melchizedek]

Just upgraded to Calibre 1.29 (from 1.28) and I can't open any books from within the software itself. (Main window.) When I double-click a book Calibre just freezes, and I have to manually force it to shut. The same happens if I choose 'edit ebook'.

However, if I click on 'open containing folder' from within Calibre, manually navigate to the book I want, and open it via 'Open with ebook viewer' (which I understand -- possibly wrongly -- is part of Calibre itself), it opens just fine. Ditto, if I 'open containing folder' from the main window, right click on the ebook manually, and choose 'open with edit ebook'. It all works fine... it just won't work when I choose these functions from the main Calibre window.

Not sure if this is relevant, but when I open Calibre in a terminal (I'm running Linux Manjaro), I get the following lines...

sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook

And when I double click a book (thus causing the freeze), I get...

/bin/sh: symbol lookup error: /bin/sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook

My current workaround is regressing back to version 1.28 from the repos. But once the repos are upgraded, I suspect I'll be in trouble.

Any ideas, gang?

Many thanks... mel

P.S. Book conversion also causes the same freeze up. I suspect that any function more technical than opening up the interface and scrolling through my books causes a lock-up.

P.P.S. This is all without my Kobo Aura HD attached. This is just basic functionality without any e-reader connected.

[kovidgoyal]

Downgrade bash to 4.2 from 4.3 and you will be fine.

[melchizedek]

Thank you, Kovid. Worked a treat.

I'm wondering, would I be better off sticking with an older version of Calibre (1.28) for the time being and hoping that Manjaro push out a tweaked version of 1.29 in their next update (assuming that's even possible), or should I continue with a downgraded Bash, put the package on ignore for now, and run the risk of future packages breaking?

Do you intend to utilise Bash 4.3 instead of 4.2 any time soon, or is this presently not on the cards for Calibre?

Many thanks, again and awesome piece of software. I live in constant fear of you moving on to pastures new and ceasing Calibre development. I'm mopping my brown just thinking about it

Kind regards...mel

[kovidgoyal]

You will have the same problem with any version of calibre. The problem is caused by an incompatibility of the version of libreadline shipped with calibre and bash 4.3. This should be fixed in the next calibre release.

[melchizedek]

Much obliged to you, Sir. I shall await a fix.

Kind regards...mel

[eschwartz]

FWIW: On Arch Linux I still get the same message. No crashes or anything, calibre works fine, just rows of "sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook".

I downgraded bash, and the error messages disappeared.

[kovidgoyal]

@eschwartz: Use the Qt 5 betas and the message will go away even without downgrading bash as they contain updated versions of libreadline