Cannot ADD ebook (error mess.)

[OmarKN]

Hi and good day,

Just starting with calibre on OSX 10.11.6 with iBooks (and iPad Air 2).

Unsuccessful to ADD an ebook (which I find in OSX Library - see screendump.)

- neither .epub nor .ibooks, same error message.

Please hv a look here:

https://www.abc.se/home/m9783/ir/x/_...ibre-error.jpg


Why I want to use calibre.app?
For easier copying text for quoting.

/
with best regards,
Omar KN
Stockholm, Sweden

[HarryT]

If you have a question about Calibre, please post it in the Calibre forum, to where I'm now moving this.

Thank you.

[eschwartz]

The problem is that iBooks does something extraordinarily stupid when importing ebooks.
It unpacks the ebook into a directory -- which it then names with a *.epub extension.

...

You can use the AppleScript wrapper here to turn those back into real ebooks: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55681
Afterwards you will be able to import them into calibre.

Note: The *.ibooks folders use Apple's custom format, so I have no idea what challenges you may face in turning them into a format that other applications (like calibre) can understand.

...
...

tl;dr
iBooks is a really bad piece of software.

[OmarKN]

Thanks for the script (using vs.3 for iBooks)

It succeeded to unpack an iBook (through the script) and could view it in Calibre.app!!

So far so good!

But every further trial for other iBooks (some have the epub, some the ibooks extension) give me the same error message as always:

—————————————..————————————-

calibre, version 2.64.0
WARNING: Errors while adding: There were problems adding some files, click "Show details" for more information


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Failed to add the file /Users/okn/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/522063581.epub to the book: /Users/okn/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/522063581
With error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/add.py", line 408, in add_formats
File "site-packages/calibre/db/cache.py", line 1374, in add_format
File "site-packages/calibre/startup.py", line 118, in local_open
IOError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: u'/Users/okn/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/522063581.epub'

—————————————..————————————-

Even after restart, any idea what going on here?

/
with best regards,
Omar K N
Stockholm, Sweden
(on OSX 10.11.6)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by OmarKN

Thanks for the script (using vs.3 for iBooks)

It succeeded to unpack an iBook (through the script) and could view it in Calibre.app!!

So far so good!

But every further trial for other iBooks (some have the epub, some the ibooks extension) give me the same error message as always:

"IOError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: u'/Users/okn/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/522063581.epub'"

The problem is that iBooks store ePubs unzipped in a folder (directory), not as an actual ePub file.

Trying to add a folder to calibre won't work. You'll need to use my AppleScript to convert the folders to actual epub files before importing.

[OmarKN]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

"…You'll need to use my AppleScript to convert the folders to actual epub files before importing.

Alright, what I did now is I copied an iBooks (zipped file, so a folder) out of Library into Documents (because the script asked me if I want to replace the iBooks file, as it already existed.)

Then I tried to unpack it and got the ff error:

Problem adding mimetype to ePub "522063581.epub":

sh: line 0: cd: /Users/okn/Documents/522063581.epub/: No such file or directory

And really this file is gone!!

- - - -

If I unzip the iBooks file in the Library/Containers …

more / less the same error:

Problem adding mimetype to ePub "522063581.epub":

sh: line 0: cd: /Users/okn/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/522063581.epub/: No such file or directory

The file is actually in the Trash:

522063581 20.08.14.epub
also with:
522063581.epub

So here I'm stuck, if you know a way out, very good.

But then if the iBooks file is DRM-locked the whole exercise would be useless anyway.

/
with best regards,
Omar K N
Stockholm, Sweden

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by OmarKN

Then I tried to unpack it and got the ff error:

Perhaps this is just a translation/terminology problem. Or perhaps it's a basic misunderstanding.

The iBooks ".epubs" are NOT compressed files. They are folders. They may look like files to you in the Finder, but they are really folders. You can't unpack them. They are already unpacked.

But as you say, they also probably have DRM. I beleive there are some commercial applications that claim to be able to remove the DRM, but I've avoided the problem by never buying from the iBook Store.

[OmarKN]

Thank you pdurrant, - it's not easy.

/
with best regards,
Omar K N
Stockholm, Sweden