DR800 Long time to index files after upgrading firmware?

[Albyr]

I recently upgraded the firmware on my DR800S and the first time I've added more files (actually only to the "Personal Documents" area) and it's been "Indexing Files" for about ten minutes. I tried restarting, but it still gets to the same stage and says "Indexing Files" again. Is this likely to be because I'm using the "automatically get metadata" setting that was introduced in the RC3 firmware? Is it likely to fix itself?

Otherwise I might be screwed. There doesn't seem to be anyway to get past this stage!

[pauli]

turn the on/off button to the left and hold it there for 10 seconds (until the LED goes off). This will reset and reboot the device, without indexing.

[Gwaihir]

Or just leave it be for a while. Others have reported that this indexing can take a really long time, so I'd just leave it be and check in on it again in an hour or two.

[Mackx]

When 'creating thumbnails during indexing' is not disabled in the Settings, thumbnails will be created for all new documents. This can take a while and there might even be documents causing the pdf-plug-in to crash or hang so the indexing will not finish at all. Unfortunately indexing does not give much feedback on its progress.
If thumbnails are not generated during indexing, they are created when opening a documents for the first time. So eventually all documents will get a thumbnail.

[Viacheslav]

Does anyone know how to DISABLE this bloody indexing? I tried all 2.0-rcX firmwares for my DR1000 but I cannot use it because it takes 3 hours to turn on the device each time! Even when thumbnails are disabled. I just want to see files and noting else.

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Viacheslav

Does anyone know how to DISABLE this bloody indexing? I tried all 2.0-rcX firmwares for my DR1000 but I cannot use it because it takes 3 hours to turn on the device each time! Even when thumbnails are disabled. I just want to see files and noting else.

Hi Viacheslav,

Good to hear that you still have your DR. Indexing depends on the number of files on the SD card. If thumbnailing is disabled no complicated actions are performed. Since you say that indexing takes such a long time each time that you start the DR, it could be that the global.db file is corrupt. You could try to remove/rename it and see if that helps.

Hope that helps.
PS: I will be away rest of this weekend and not be able to react.

[Viacheslav]

Originally Posted by Mackx

Good to hear that you still have your DR.

The DR is OK and works fine with the latest "1.x" firmware. I like to read it it the garden.

Originally Posted by Mackx

Indexing depends on the number of files on the SD card.

That's the whole problem. The point of having a reader for me is to carry all my library and reading stuff everywhere. It means over 150 000 files on a 32Gb card. That's why indexing takes forever.

The current solutions to make indexing less painful are either inadequate or make DR useless.

• Uploading just 1-100 books at a time is stupid because the DR would cease to be an autonomous self-sufficient device. I do not want to have to carry another device for feeding it.
• Disabling thumbnails does not change anything. Waiting 3 or 6 hours before being able to see a page is equally unacceptable.

Indexing serves no useful purpose either. All my files are arranged by titles, authors, languages and genres. The pdf's are usually scientific papers with tagged names like "submission234" or "MTT10-3454" The descriptive names are in the filenames. The fiction books are usually in the zipped FB2 format which the firmware does not understand and cannot index anyway. There are many DJVu files which cannot be indexed too.

Originally Posted by Mackx

If thumbnailing is disabled no complicated actions are performed. Since you say that indexing takes such a long time each time that you start the DR, it could be that the global.db file is corrupt. You could try to remove/rename it and see if that helps

Tried it several times with no effect. The file is OK. Its the process of making it that makes the 2.0 firmware and everything around it unusable.

[rvs]

Disabling indexing with 2.0 firmware is not really an option. Even when you browse the SD-card from within the reader, it doesn't read from the filesystem, but instead uses the index to "recreate" the filesystem.

So I think you're out of luck.

[Viacheslav]

Originally Posted by rvs

Even when you browse the SD-card from within the reader, it doesn't read from the filesystem, but instead uses the index to "recreate" the filesystem.

Yes, I am aware of that. This crazy scheme was definitely conceived while smoking hashish It means that to make the 2.0.x firmware usable someone has to port a real filemanager like Thunar of adapt the file browsing backend part of the 1.x firmware. I would be happy to get rid of the "bookshelf" UI.

[fekhner]

in fact, my usage of the DR is very similar to yours: carrying a large part of my library on it for easy access, so I also have the 32GB card, but so far only about 350 books in pdf/djvu and about 500 papers on it (even though my computer library is much larger); the filenames contain the relevant information information, the tag names are useless,

this implies that the book view is more or less useless while the SD card view is what I really use (I did not have the courage so far to try to implement the possibility offered by Mack's hack not to change the file name after opening a file in a systematic way);

so far I have had no problem at all with indexing, but I am only using 88% of the SD card memory at the moment ...

[rvs]

Originally Posted by fekhner

this implies that the book view is more or less useless while the SD card view is what I really use (I did not have the courage so far to try to implement the possibility offered by Mack's hack not to change the file name after opening a file in a systematic way)

I assume you mean the no_update tag? This would mean you would have to tag every book on the device and add a tag each time you put a new book on the device. I think a global setting that affects all books would be far easier in use.

[fekhner]

Originally Posted by rvs

I assume you mean the no_update tag? This would mean you would have to tag every book on the device and add a tag each time you put a new book on the device. I think a global setting that affects all books would be far easier in use.

I agree of course, but at least Mackx has implemented a viable workaround. Furthermore in the latest version one can give a tag to multiple books, maybe a "select all" option in this context would come quite close to a global setting ...

[rvs]

Originally Posted by fekhner

I agree of course, but at least Mackx has implemented a viable workaround. Furthermore in the latest version one can give a tag to multiple books, maybe a "select all" option in this context would come quite close to a global setting ...

It was sort of meant as a subtle hint to Mackx that he should implement this

Just kidding, but it would be a great feature. The problem with the "select all" option is that most of the documents I read are documents I've only just put on the device. So to be consistent I would have to add tags everytime I add documents.

I actually wrote a hack today and it works great, but it's just a very quick and dirty hack on Mackx's previous code and I don't know how to make it user configurable. But if you want I can look into this a bit further and see if I can come up with something.

[fekhner]

Originally Posted by rvs

It was sort of meant as a subtle hint to Mackx that he should implement this

Just kidding, but it would be a great feature. The problem with the "select all" option is that most of the documents I read are documents I've only just put on the device. So to be consistent I would have to add tags everytime I add documents.

I actually wrote a hack today and it works great, but it's just a very quick and dirty hack on Mackx's previous code and I don't know how to make it user configurable. But if you want I can look into this a bit further and see if I can come up with something.

please do, even if it would not be very user-friendly, I would most probably try to use it on my device ...

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by Viacheslav

That's the whole problem. The point of having a reader for me is to carry all my library and reading stuff everywhere. It means over 150 000 files on a 32Gb card. That's why indexing takes forever.

That is indeed a lot of books. I do not think that the iRex developers had this usecase in mind when creating the new system.

Originally Posted by Viacheslav

Indexing serves no useful purpose either. All my files are arranged by titles, authors, languages and genres. The pdf's are usually scientific papers with tagged names like "submission234" or "MTT10-3454" The descriptive names are in the filenames. The fiction books are usually in the zipped FB2 format which the firmware does not understand and cannot index anyway. There are many DJVu files which cannot be indexed too.

As rvs already explained, the real content of the SD-card is not shown. A representation of the SD-card content is made in a database which is then used to show in the UI. During indexing all folders of the file-system are read and compared with the content of the database, if needed updated (additions/removals) are made.

Originally Posted by Viacheslav

Tried it several times with no effect. The file is OK. Its the process of making it that makes the 2.0 firmware and everything around it unusable.

I see what you mean. The database contains the filename, the path and some extra information of every file. During indexing filename and path of every file from SD-card and of every file in the DB are stored in memory to be able to detect differences. With 150 000 files this would be a huge amount of memory, I can imagine that there is even not enough memory, so indexing in your case would never end...