Trouble with books staying connected and metadata

[tamhas]

Periodically, I will take a set of books which have automatically downloaded to my Kindle and add them to Calibre. Sometimes, when I go back the next time, these, or some of these, books are not shown in the device viewer as being in the library. If I match them to the library, they are sure enough there and it seems that after the metadata in device update, that this then sticks permanently. I brought this up previously and the suggestion was made that it related to my keeping my Calibre database on Dropbox, i.e., actually pointing it to a Dropbox folder, not copying it there after each use. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me since it seems like it must do some kind of match when the device is connected to know what is new. I used to keep Calibre open for long periods of time, but don't do that any more, so right after I have done an update like this I have gotten out of Calibre so it should have a clean relationship to the database. Clarification, perhaps?

The other problem I have noticed is that my wife recently showed me about downloading metadata to get summaries and such. It is irritating that this wipes out my previous conversion of the author's name to last, first, but now that I know it is going to do that, I know to do it in the right order. But, I also have noticed a couple of times that the title on the has a subtitle and the downloaded one does not, the books become disconnected. E.g., the book on the Kindle might be The Foo Bar Follies (A Barbar story), but the title in the downloaded metadata will simply be The Foo Bar Follies. When this happens and I go to the device, the book will no longer appear in the library. If I match using only the abbreviated title, I can reconnect them, but this is tedious. Any hope?

[theducks]

Active Library ON dropbox? (you did read the FAQ? )

Any metadata (usually Author or Title) change can affect the on device matching

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by tamhas

Periodically, I will take a set of books which have automatically downloaded to my Kindle and add them to Calibre. Sometimes, when I go back the next time, these, or some of these, books are not shown in the device viewer as being in the library. If I match them to the library, they are sure enough there and it seems that after the metadata in device update, that this then sticks permanently. I brought this up previously and the suggestion was made that it related to my keeping my Calibre database on Dropbox, i.e., actually pointing it to a Dropbox folder, not copying it there after each use. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me since it seems like it must do some kind of match when the device is connected to know what is new. I used to keep Calibre open for long periods of time, but don't do that any more, so right after I have done an update like this I have gotten out of Calibre so it should have a clean relationship to the database. Clarification, perhaps?

The other problem I have noticed is that my wife recently showed me about downloading metadata to get summaries and such. It is irritating that this wipes out my previous conversion of the author's name to last, first, but now that I know it is going to do that, I know to do it in the right order. But, I also have noticed a couple of times that the title on the has a subtitle and the downloaded one does not, the books become disconnected. E.g., the book on the Kindle might be The Foo Bar Follies (A Barbar story), but the title in the downloaded metadata will simply be The Foo Bar Follies. When this happens and I go to the device, the book will no longer appear in the library. If I match using only the abbreviated title, I can reconnect them, but this is tedious. Any hope?

@tamhas - in Preferences>Sharing->Metadata download you can control what columns get downloaded - just uncheck Author if you don't want it overwritten, You can also control what gets downloaded by site - e.g. some folks only download tags from Goodreads.

Re Dropbox - you have obviously read the FAQ regarding keeping libraries on network devices (essentially that's what Dropbox is - a network device). The guideline is straight forward - before starting calibre stop Dropbox synchronisation, when calibre is closed start Dropbox synchronisation.

The FAQ was written by the person who designed and developed calibre, so by definition it must make sense to him. And the incidence of problems when his guidelines are not followed is testament to his good sense

BR

[tamhas]

What happens with this setup if the Windows box with Calibre is asleep ... as it would certainly be any time one was traveling?

What information is available on the reader device? Theresa has a lot of additional information in her Calibre which she would want available for book selection ... exactly the reason for wanting Calibre on the reader.

I can understand issues with the library in Dropbox if one was trying to access it multi-user and nothing had been done to make Calibre multi-user, but I don't understand why serial usage, exiting after each use, would be an issue.

[tamhas]

OK, I read the FAQ about Dropbox and I am still a bit surprised since it seems like lots of things should have trouble with Dropbox and that isn't the impression I have. But, it seems like pausing the sync before using Calibre and restarting the sync afterwards should take care of the problem, no?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tamhas

What happens with this setup if the Windows box with Calibre is asleep ... as it would certainly be any time one was traveling?

Originally Posted by tamhas

OK, I read the FAQ about Dropbox and I am still a bit surprised since it seems like lots of things should have trouble with Dropbox and that isn't the impression I have. But, it seems like pausing the sync before using Calibre and restarting the sync afterwards should take care of the problem, no?

Maybe.

The rule is that under no circumstances can two instances of calibre GUI be open on the same library. Pausing dropbox does not change this at all. If on two machines you pause dropbox, open calibre, make changes, close calibre, and restart dropbox then changes will be lost and most likely dropbox will signal collisions. There is almost 100% probability that your library will be damaged.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tamhas

What information is available on the reader device? Theresa has a lot of additional information in her Calibre which she would want available for book selection ... exactly the reason for wanting Calibre on the reader.

Depends on the reader device. Android readers running Calibre Companion have complete access to calibre's metadata for books on the device (disclosure: I am the developer of Calibre Companion). Kobo readers have access to quite a lot of the metadata, depending on how the driver is set up (others can help with this). Most dedicated reader devices such kindles are very weak on metadata access, often limiting searches to title & author. I have no experience with Apple devices.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

Most dedicated reader devices such kindles are very weak on metadata access, often limiting searches to title & author. I have no experience with Apple devices.

Kindles require an active 'Network' connection for metadata other than what you mentioned.
If you keep this turned OFF, no metadata.
CC on Android is a winner in this respect with off-line metadata

[BetterRed]

Moderator Notice
posts 4-8 moved from unrelated thread started by another user on a different issue, to this thread started by tamhas on his issue

[theducks]

You could control the CPU power using one of these devices:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_pc...be&node=541966

or find some way to enable the use of a 'Magic Packet' (I believe MP is LAN only)

[BetterRed]

@tamhas - To keep a Windows computer alive disable sleep in power options, should be ok for the screen and disks to sleep.

Or maybe use this ==>> Access Your Computer Anytime and Save Energy with Wake-on-LAN

BR

[tamhas]

OK, I get that one has to be careful about multi-user. This is really only an issue if we decide to try to use the same catalog. It clearly would be safer to just make a copy of the catalog and work from that, but, then, of course, we would have the problem of merging updates. It may not be difficult to manage, though, since I only access infrequently, and my use is mostly limited to loading new Kindle books and converting them to ePub for her use on the Nook. Whereas, she does a lot more work on extra columns and the like.

The server thing sounds very iffy to me. We are sometimes gone for a week or two and one doesn't really want to have the Windows box waking up all the time. We could put the catalog on a Linux server which manages our mail ... except I am trying to get rid of that and I'm not sure how we would handle updates.

Calibre Companion isn't really an option right now as she has just purchased a Windows tablet for this purpose, unless she decides to return it.

What would be nice is to set the library to be normally read-only and then switch on read access only to do the sync after some updates.

[TdeV]

Originally Posted by tamhas

Calibre Companion isn't really an option right now as she has just purchased a Windows tablet for this purpose, unless she decides to return it.

I have 13 days to return the Windows tablet to BestBuy, so if this is really recommended, please be emphatic!

[tamhas]

As I understand it, Calibre Companion still would require the setup of the calibre server, which means that the Windows box would have to be running whenever you wanted to access the information. This seems to me to be unworkable. Even when we are here, you box would often have gone to sleep at the point where you wanted to access the catalog. The Linux box is up all the time, but then we have the problem of how to maintain the catalog. It really seems like a cloud implementation is preferred, even if it has some issues to manage.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by TdeV

I have 13 days to return the Windows tablet to BestBuy, so if this is really recommended, please be emphatic!

If you have an Android device (phone, tablet, something) then try the free CC demo version to see if it satisfies your needs.

CC is a (mostly) read-only calibre client that can show/sort/search off-line by all calibre metadata, including custom columns. It does not permit editing the metadata, with the exception of Read and Date-read information. Many people keep thousands of books in CC on their device, the largest I am aware of is 18,000, so it can almost certainly satisfy the "find something to read" requirement. CC is not a reader app, meaning you can choose the app that you like to actually read the books.

I read on my phone (Nexus 5) and on an e-ink android device (Boox Afterglow 2), both running CC. Others read on Nexus 7 tablets (16% of CC users), Galaxy Tabs (4%), Nook HD (2%), and many other devices.