Can you run Calibre & Portable on same PC?

[Vortex]

I need a way to be able to work on one Calibre library while downloading Metadata & Covers for another Calibre library (I get bored waiting... ) . I've been searching the forum and read that I cant run more than one instance of Calibre on the same computer, does this also apply to Calibre Portable? Is there any other way I can do this? Thanks.

[BetterRed]

@Vortex - you can only run one calibre of any sort. You can run another calibre on a virtual machine, but I would suggest not against the same library.

If you use bulk metadata download - select multiple books, ctrl/d - you can do other things whilst the download is progressing, when the downloading finishes a notification appears (bottom right), and you can respond to that when you're good and ready.

BR

[Vortex]

You can do other things on the same library when using bulk metadata download, but it often causes the whole download to abort when it finds something has changed since the start of the download, and then you have to run it all over again.

I never thought of running one on a VM, I'll give it a go.

[PeterT]

If you're truly desperate, one option would be to change the mutex used by calibre to prevent multiple instances running. One approach to this would be run standard calibre as is, and to run portable calibre from source, and override the mutex used by calibre portable.

See source file utils\lock.py and look at

if iswindows:
    def singleinstance(name):
        mutexname = 'mutexforsingleinstanceof'+__appname__+name
        mutex =  win32event.CreateMutex(None, False, mutexname)

__appname__ is calibre

singleinstance is called from gui2\main.py with the variable

singleinstance_name = 'calibre_GUI'

so maybe change that to

singleinstance_name = 'calibre_PORTABLE'

and always runs portable from source.

Remember though NEVER EVER EVER point both to the same library.

Also, this has NOT been tested and I am NOT RESPONSIBLE for any corruption that might happen.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Vortex

You can do other things on the same library when using bulk metadata download, but it often causes the whole download to abort when it finds something has changed since the start of the download, and then you have to run it all over again.

I never thought of running one on a VM, I'll give it a go.

I see this all the time, and it asks are you sure, it does not jettison the download job.

[Vortex]

Thank you PeterT, I'll give that a try.

eschwartz, You're correct, that's what happens when doing a metadata download for a small number of books, try it with a multi-thousand download, and make a few changes to the metadata of the books, you'll get an error message - I've forgotten exactly what it says - but after OK-ing the message it just stops with nothing done and you have to start all over again. Happened to me 3 times in a week before I worked out what was going on.

[eschwartz]

Huh, never tried with a multi-thousand download. I usually process books as they come in so it's never more than 40-50.

That sounds like a bug to me.

[Vortex]

Originally Posted by PeterT

If you're truly desperate, one option would be to change the mutex used by calibre to prevent multiple instances running. One approach to this would be run standard calibre as is, and to run portable calibre from source, and override the mutex used by calibre portable.

See source file utils\lock.py and look at

if iswindows:
    def singleinstance(name):
        mutexname = 'mutexforsingleinstanceof'+__appname__+name
        mutex =  win32event.CreateMutex(None, False, mutexname)

__appname__ is calibre

singleinstance is called from gui2\main.py with the variable

singleinstance_name = 'calibre_GUI'

so maybe change that to

singleinstance_name = 'calibre_PORTABLE'

and always runs portable from source.

Remember though NEVER EVER EVER point both to the same library.

Also, this has NOT been tested and I am NOT RESPONSIBLE for any corruption that might happen.

Peter, There is no file utils\lock.py or gui2\main.py , nearest I can find is utils\lock.pyo and gui2\main.pyo which are in the pylib.zip file. I looked at them with Edit Pad Pro and some of the same stuff is mentioned in the code but it's very different to what you have above. Am I looking in the right place?

[PeterT]

You need to download the SOURCE and run from source... See http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/develop.html

The source for the current release is always at http://status.calibre-ebook.com/dist/src