Unable to download e-book cover

[YumiYumi]

Hello everyone,
A few days ago I installed a new hard drive to hold my caliber library and my books.
I indicated in the software the new location of the library as well as verified the integrity of the latter. However, since that day, I can no longer download the covers of the books even though it worked very well before. I have an error message like this:

Starting cover download for: Nos Amis les Humains
Query: Nos Amis les Humains ['Bernard Werber'] {'isbn': '9782226137937', 'babelio_id': 'Werber-Nos-Amis-les-Humains/4355'}

****************************** Google Images Covers ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.150 Safari/537.36')]
Failed to download valid cover
Took 0.29386448860168457 seconds
Search URL: https://www.google.com/search?as_st=...,iar:t,ift:jpg
No images found for, title: 'Nos Amis les Humains' and authors: ['Bernard Werber']

************************************************** ******************************

I'm running version 6.27 and I tried to go back to an old version 6.20 for example and that didn't change anything.

Do you have any idea where the problem could come from? I would like to point out that I have not made any changes to my settings since the move.

THANKS.

[TomWaitsForNoMan]

I'm having exactly the same problem, and have been for a couple of weeks now. Goodreads cover search seems to work ok, but neither Google Images nor Kindle High-Res are working. The log is as follows:


****************************** Google Images Covers ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.77 Safari/537.36')]
Failed to download valid cover
Took 0.4989509582519531 seconds
Search URL: https://www.google.com/search?as_st=...,iar:t,ift:jpg
No images found for, title: 'Interview With Vampire' and authors: ['Anne Rice']

************************************************** ******************************

****************************** Kindle hi-res covers Covers ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.87 Safari/537.36')]
Failed to download valid cover
Took 3.4740917682647705 seconds
ASIN not present in metadata
Goodreads id present in metadata: 43763
Fetching book details: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43763
ISBN present in metadata: %s 9780345476876
Searching Goodreads for book: https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=9780345476876
Fetching book details: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...th_the_Vampire
Cover URLs: []

************************************************** ******************************

[JSWolf]

Install the plugin Kobo Metadata. It allows you to change the country you want the cover from (as long as Kobo supports said country). Not all covers downloaded will be high resolution. Most will be.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=355983

Also, go into the plugins preferences and see what plugins you have installed for downloading covers. Some work and some need help to work. Check if any are disabled.

For example, Kindle Hi-res Covers works with Kindle eBooks and for non-Kindle eBooks, you need to put the ASIN in the ID field.

[TomWaitsForNoMan]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them when I'm at my computer. That doesn't explain why Google cover search has stopped working though. I haven't changed anything to do with plugins in months and it only stopped working 2 weeks ago

[kovidgoyal]

Google Images still works for me. Most likely google has temporarily blocked your IP address for too many requests.

[JSWolf]

I suggest you unplug your router for about 30 minutes and then plug it back in to hopefully get a different IP. If Kovid is correct and you've been banned, this should help.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I suggest you unplug your router for about 30 minutes and then plug it back in to hopefully get a different IP. If Kovid is correct and you've been banned, this should help.

This depends on the ISP. If you have a static IP (not likely, since you usually need to pay for them) or are behind a carrier-grade NAT (more likely, but still depends on the ISP) it won't help.

30 minutes is usually a bit overkill. 60 seconds does it for me, but if that doesn't work try 5-10 minutes.

If you're using a VPN, disable it. A lot of places block traffic from them due to bad actors.

[TomWaitsForNoMan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Google Images still works for me. Most likely google has temporarily blocked your IP address for too many requests.

Would this block last for more than 2 weeks? That's how long I left it between attempts. Also if I copy and paste the search URL from the log I get results just fine

[theducks]

A 'block' would be your (routers) IP. So Something else is stopping Calibre (plugin) from getting out. A corrupted plugin setting? (happens occasionally. They are located in the configuration folder.)

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by TomWaitsForNoMan

Would this block last for more than 2 weeks? That's how long I left it between attempts. Also if I copy and paste the search URL from the log I get results just fine

Unless you have a static IP (which you'd probably know, as you usually have to pay for those), the IP lease renewal is up to the ISP. You might be able to speed along the process by turning off your modem for a bit and then turning it back on. If you don't have access to the modem, try calling the ISP.

[TomWaitsForNoMan]

I do have a static IP, but I assumed that "google has temporarily blocked your IP address" meant the IP was temporarily blocked, not that it was permanently blocked and I'd need to get a new one. Also it doesn't explain why I can use Google just fine from the same computer via the browser, including copy/pasting the same search URL the plugin is using

[Comfy.n]

deleted

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by TomWaitsForNoMan

I do have a static IP, but I assumed that "google has temporarily blocked your IP address" meant the IP was temporarily blocked, not that it was permanently blocked and I'd need to get a new one. Also it doesn't explain why I can use Google just fine from the same computer via the browser, including copy/pasting the same search URL the plugin is using

There's ways to detect between automated and human traffic. Browser fingerprinting, for example. I'm not sure how long Google's temporary blocks last.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by TomWaitsForNoMan

I do have a static IP, but I assumed that "google has temporarily blocked your IP address" meant the IP was temporarily blocked, not that it was permanently blocked and I'd need to get a new one. Also it doesn't explain why I can use Google just fine from the same computer via the browser, including copy/pasting the same search URL the plugin is using

No one knows the mind of google. Easiest way to test is to setup a VPN and use that and see if things work. In my experience these blocks usually last a few hours, but am sure google implements some brain dead machine learning algorithm or the other to score IP address reputations mixed with browser fingerprints, and so on.

[bird11]

Same experience as YumiYumi in #1 after upgrading to Calibre 6.27! Up to very recently, I had no problem downloading covers for multiple books in Win10 with a very high hit rate, often even 10/10. Now, with 6.27, the Big Book Cover Search does no longer seem to work properly producing the following errors in the log:


****************************** Open Library Covers ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.87 Safari/537.36')]
Failed to download valid cover
Took 0.8076159954071045 seconds
No cover for ISBN: '9783476050885' found

************************************************** ******************************

****************************** Big Book Search Covers ******************************
Request extra headers: [('User-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.0.0 Safari/537.36')]
Failed to download valid cover
Took 0.6220755577087402 seconds
Failed to download cover from Big Book Search
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre\ebooks\metadata\sources\covers.py", line 42, in run
File "calibre\ebooks\metadata\sources\big_book_search.p y", line 43, in download_cover
File "calibre\ebooks\metadata\sources\big_book_search.p y", line 18, in get_urls
File "mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 257, in open
File "mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 313, in _mech_open
mechanize._response.get_seek_wrapper_class.<locals >.httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 404: Not Found

************************************************** ******************************


The log above indicates that there is no cover in the Open Library. However, there is a correct cover in the Big Book Search database which I also checked online. Unfortunately, something goes wrong when Calibre tries to download it. This did not happen in previous Calibre versions. I checked this by manually (Metadata Editor) searching again for covers for books that are already in my Calibre database and for which Calibre had been able to find them successfully. Now, with 6.27, I am drawing a blank with the error reported above.

Any ideas how to rectify the problem?
Many thanks for any suggestions.