PRS-T1 Showing "Removing" in booklist?

[anesthezea]

I have a T1 and I've noticed that in some of my collections there are what I guess you could call phantom placeholders with "removing" in them. Sometimes they count in the collection's book count, sometimes they don't. I've restarted my T1 and they are still there.

Here are some photos to show what I mean. Any ideas?

ETA: They show up in collections on both my SD card and the main memory.

[bla]

By restart do you mean a soft reset ? I had that once ... with me it was a bad epub , I ended up deleting it using my pc with the device plugged in.

[anesthezea]

Originally Posted by bla

By restart do you mean a soft reset ? I had that once ... with me it was a bad epub , I ended up deleting it using my pc with the device plugged in.

Yes, it was a soft reset. There are so many files on it at the moment, I have no idea where to start as far as it possibly being a bad epub. Is there something I should look for, some distinguishing characteristic of a bad epub? Thanks for replying, by the way.

[bla]

It's doubtful that it is a bad epub since you have so many of them, a free program called SIGIL will allow you to check your e-pubs, I don't have a link for it but do a Google and you will find it, btw are you using calibre and/or the PC reader software ??

[anesthezea]

Originally Posted by bla

It's doubtful that it is a bad epub since you have so many of them, a free program called SIGIL will allow you to check your e-pubs, I don't have a link for it but do a Google and you will find it, btw are you using calibre and/or the PC reader software ??

I love Calibre. I use it all the time. I can't use the Sony software because I use the Ubuntu OS.

I have used Sigil before, but just to copy/paste simple things to make an epub. I don't care for the way it formats things, so I don't use it unless it's absolutely necessary. I currently have more than 4,500 files on the Reader (I read A LOT of fanfiction), so checking things in Sigil one file at a time would be a big pain. But if it is a bad epub, I guess I could just grit my teeth and try it. But that's a lot of files! lol

[bla]

No I wouldn't suggest you try and check 4500 files lol... it sounds more like a device software problem... maybe 4500 files is too many I have just over 2300 with no problems, I would consider backing up your books off the device (if you haven't got them on your pc and do a hard reset, this will blow away all your loaded books, then reload and see if it's cured.. unless anyone has any better suggestion.

[anesthezea]

Originally Posted by bla

No I wouldn't suggest you try and check 4500 files lol... it sounds more like a device software problem... maybe 4500 files is too many I have just over 2300 with no problems, I would consider backing up your books off the device (if you haven't got them on your pc and do a hard reset, this will blow away all your loaded books, then reload and see if it's cured.. unless anyone has any better suggestion.

I don't believe it's a problem with the number of files because I've seen this behavior before when I haven't had nearly so many on the device. Of course, I could always be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

I have all of my files backed up on two external HDs as well as in my Dropbox folder. I have had far too many crashes over the past few years to rely on one source of backup.

I did recently do a factory reset (before loading what's presently on the reader). I will do another one and see if it fixes things.

[anesthezea]

I didn't do another factory reset, but I did try a few things and it seems to be related somehow to the SD card.

Via the Reader, I formatted the SD card, erasing all of the files that were on it. I checked my YA Fantasy/Urban Fantasy collection again (this collection is shown in the photos of my original post illustrating the problem I'm having). The "removing" spots were gone.

I loaded a handful of files back onto the SD card and checked the collection again. None of the files on the SD card go in the YA Fantasy/UF collection, but the "removing" spots were showing up there again. They showed up in a few main memory collections and some of the SD-only collections.

So I popped the SD card out and checked the YA Fantasy/UF collection again and the "removing" spots were gone again. I don't know why it's happening, but I think it's safe to say that it has something to do with the SD card.

[bla]

Yeah I think you have found it... a "flaky" sd card could cause that condition,a file can "disappear' and reappear confusing the os

[AnotherCat]

I (and others too) have the same problem. It is not one of files disappearing because in my testing I found that one can format both the card and the main memory, load some books using Calibre and "Removing" lines may appear in Collections on the T1 even though all the books loaded also appear correctly in the collection i.e. no books have been lost. The "Removing" lines in Collections are each counted as a book so giving an inflated total of actual books in the collection.

It is also not limited to the card as I get it, but less frequently, with collections of books in main memory as well. Differentiation between the card and main memory on my T1 and with Calibre libraries is along the lines that in Calibre I have 2 libraries one of which I sync with the main memory and the other with the card.

I had some suspicion initially that it may be related to the T1 PlugIn's mishandling of multiple tags and series against a book but I am now pretty sure that is not the case.

My suspicions currently lie mainly with the T1 getting confused in some manner with its handling of the book.db database in each of the main memory and card or (but less likely) with Calibre's loading and unloading of books - at least when "loading" because I found that the problem can appear when all one has done is load books onto a bookless reader. EDIT: If this is so then the problem likely only exists when the T1 has a card.

However those suspicions are numpty based as I have no knowledge of the workings of the plugin or the T1's management of the books.db databases. Which means that I have come to a dead end in trying to resolve the issue.

[AnotherCat]

Had some time to play with this again and got a situation that ended up with "removing" lines in collections of books just in the T1's memory but their behaviour implicated the card.

- Started with T1 memory and card empty of books
- Loaded from Calibre some books from one library onto the card and from another library into the T1 memory with the T1 device plugin creating collections from tags and series. All books have tags, some have series.
- 11 of the books loaded into memory, all epubs, had the same tag and 7 of those were from the same series and correctly 2 collections for these were created on the T1, 11 in one collection and the 7 series ones in another
- In addition to the books in one collection there were also 5 "Removing" lines and in the other 2 "Removing" lines, so by chance or by reason of the issue the total of those lines was equal to the number of books in the series. (Contrary to what I mentioned in my last post these lines were not counted as books for the book count for each collection on this occasion).

Then keeping in mind these two collections were of books in memory

- I removed the card from the T1 with the T1 turned off and when I did so the collections remained as expected but all the "Removing" lines disappeared
- I then replaced the card and the collections remained but the "Removing" lines, the same number in each collection as before, returned into them.

As a note to the above I have in the past experienced the issue appearing for collections of books with tags only, no series.

Maybe someone may recognise some clues in that?

[Ravensknight]

One more reason I don't use a sdcard: One more thing that can go wrong...

[carpetmojo]

I have this problem now and then - it usually/eventually sorts itself out, or I have had success simply double-deleting them, also installing another copy from the download, and then deleting them.
Don't ask me why...

[Teknikal]

I think it happens when there is a collection that hasn't been synced all at one time. I did have the same issue but it stopped for me when I stopped letting calibre use tags as collections and began only syncing a complete series of books at once.

The downside for me is if a new book in a series comes out I have to remove all the books in that series and then sync the entire series again with the new book included.

Honestly not sure if it's a Calibre issue or a Sony issue but as long as I keep to the above rule it seems to work fine for me.

[Tuttle]

When it happened to me, it was an issue in the books.db file on the storage card. (I don't store books on the internal memory.)

There's a table in the database called collections which stores the list of books in each collection. It turned out that for each book that was meant to be in the collection, there were two entries -- one had the correct ID for the book on the storage card (e.g. 4294967364), and the other was 2^32 less (e.g. 68). Deleting those incorrect entries (using SQLiteSpy or sqlite3 or similar) cleared up the collections.

I *think* the query I used to clean it up was:

DELETE FROM collections WHERE content_id NOT IN (select _id FROM books);

But it's not happening at the moment so I can't test. Next time I trip over it I'll take better notes. The idea is there though -- if a book doesn't exist, it shouldn't be in any collections.

I'm not sure whether the source of the problem is a Calibre bug or just Calibre tickling a bug in the T1; it hasn't bothered me enough to investigate more.