Book covers not showing properly in Calibre 7.1.2

[lovedj1]

Hi.

For several months now, since I formated my PC and then reloaded the calibre library from an external drive (I have it in a folder in my Box account), the book covers, for some reason, don't all show on the navigation panel in the midle (although they do show on the right hand side panel). ANy idea why this is happening and how to sort it out?

Thanks

[kovidgoyal]

make sure nothing else is accessing the calibre library folder at the same time as calibre. Suspend box syncing while calibre is running.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lovedj1

Hi.

For several months now, since I formated my PC and then reloaded the calibre library from an external drive (I have it in a folder in my Box account), the book covers, for some reason, don't all show on the navigation panel in the midle (although they do show on the right hand side panel). ANy idea why this is happening and how to sort it out?

Thanks

You do not want your active library in Box or the Box software to ever touch it. It's eventually going to fail. It's not a matter if if, it's a matter of when. You will eventually find your active library has been screwed. So if you want your library on Box. you'll have to copy it to another directory that Box manages.

[lovedj1]

Thank you Kovid, I will try that. But I have been running both Calibre and my library like this for years and this never happened before.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

make sure nothing else is accessing the calibre library folder at the same time as calibre. Suspend box syncing while calibre is running.

[lovedj1]

Thnks, JSWolf, but I have had my library in Box for years and never had any issues with it. In fact, if I remember correctly, I think it may have been in this very forum where I read the idea the first time and tried it. And it has many advantages, like the fact that I can send books to my kindle from my phone and from anywhere in the world without need of a (my) PC.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You do not want your active library in Box or the Box software to ever touch it. It's eventually going to fail. It's not a matter if if, it's a matter of when. You will eventually find your active library has been screwed. So if you want your library on Box. you'll have to copy it to another directory that Box manages.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lovedj1

Thnks, JSWolf, but I have had my library in Box for years and never had any issues with it. In fact, if I remember correctly, I think it may have been in this very forum where I read the idea the first time and tried it. And it has many advantages, like the fact that I can send books to my kindle from my phone and from anywhere in the world without need of a (my) PC.

But Box can change how there software functions without letting you know and that could cause any number of problems.

Setup the Box software to sync from a specific directory. Then after you close calibre, you can to a one-way sync using FreeFileSync to the Box directory and then that will sync to Box and you will have your library on Box and you won't have to worry about your active library getting corrupt.

[theducks]

The Q is not IF, but WHEN it will corrupt.
You found when.

Calibre is a Hybrid of a DB and a file system. The MUST remain in lock step. That is only possible on a Local (attached to the PC) disc

[lovedj1]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will give it a try :-)

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But Box can change how there software functions without letting you know and that could cause any number of problems.

Setup the Box software to sync from a specific directory. Then after you close calibre, you can to a one-way sync using FreeFileSync to the Box directory and then that will sync to Box and you will have your library on Box and you won't have to worry about your active library getting corrupt.

[lovedj1]

Thanks for the reply. I will follow the suggestions above and change my setup. Although, my Calibre library IS locally stored on a drive in my PC. It's just that the folder it is in belongs to the Box Sync folder. But I guess it does function differently to a "normal" internal folder, as I tried logging off Box today to see if that changed the behaviour of Calibre (as suggested by Kovid Goyal above) and what happened was that when I re-launched Calibre, it opened up with an empty library. So I guess that Box folder isn't a normal folder.
Again, thank you all for the suggestions and I will change de setup as suggested.

Originally Posted by theducks

The Q is not IF, but WHEN it will corrupt.
You found when.

Calibre is a Hybrid of a DB and a file system. The MUST remain in lock step. That is only possible on a Local (attached to the PC) disc

[theducks]

Just pause the sync while Calibre is running AND only mirror, not 2-way

[lovedj1]

Originally Posted by theducks

Just pause the sync while Calibre is running AND only mirror, not 2-way

I don't know if I'll remember to pause the sync everytime, but I do have it set as only one way. It may be better to just do it manually rather than having it on auto sync, as I don't think I'll remember to pause it. But thanks for the pointer :-)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lovedj1

I don't know if I'll remember to pause the sync everytime, but I do have it set as only one way. It may be better to just do it manually rather than having it on auto sync, as I don't think I'll remember to pause it. But thanks for the pointer :-)

For one friend of mine, we wrote a batch file that stops the sync, runs calibre and when calibre exits, restarts the one way sync. It does slow down calibre's startup but pretty much guarantees that sync will be stopped before calibre is opened. For their purposes, we needed to stop Dropbox and found this:

taskkill  /F /IM dropbox.exe /T

which killed dropbox. After calibre was close, the file ran dropbox.exe.

[lovedj1]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For one friend of mine, we wrote a batch file that stops the sync, runs calibre and when calibre exits, restarts the one way sync. It does slow down calibre's startup but pretty much guarantees that sync will be stopped before calibre is opened. For their purposes, we needed to stop Dropbox and found this:

taskkill  /F /IM dropbox.exe /T

which killed dropbox. After calibre was close, the file ran dropbox.exe.

Thanks, but I wouldn't even know what to do with that piece of code.

In any case, I have disabled the folder synching software and I will do the backups manually periodically.

But what bugs me is that I had been using Calibre with my library in a native folder in Box Sync for years without issues and I don't understand how come all of a sudden this is a problem.

Thank you all for the feedback and suggestions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For one friend of mine, we wrote a batch file that stops the sync, runs calibre and when calibre exits, restarts the one way sync. It does slow down calibre's startup but pretty much guarantees that sync will be stopped before calibre is opened. For their purposes, we needed to stop Dropbox and found this:

taskkill  /F /IM dropbox.exe /T

which killed dropbox. After calibre was close, the file ran dropbox.exe.

And if there is a problem with the library on Dropbox, you could get this problem synced back to your active library. Until there is just a one-way sync, there is no way you should ever let your cloud software near your active calibre libraries.

[theducks]

Modern Software is not Static, like in the 1980's, where you had to order security updates discs because a 300baud modem took forever, even for a 1.2M floppies worth.
FWIW The latest Calibre beta was over 168M, I don't even remember when I first got a HD that could even hold that (I had a pair of 40M drives on a early AT class, which was insanely Geeky, at the time).

So when you say that you 'changed nothin', only means you did not press the button or type a new setting. And you (and me) have no ideas what those cloud folk do (to the software) on their end.