Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

bhrgunatha · 2017-06-19 18:09:55

Calibre was recently upgraded to v 3.

Since then the ebookviewer application is almost unusable.

epubs seems OK, but many (although not ALL) mobi books cause the python2 ebookviewer application to max out at 25% CPU (which is the absolute maximum for regular python on my 4 core machine.) There are many issues with the rendering too especially when trying to switch to full screen.

I've tried downgrading to calibre 2.85.1 and it is somewhat better, but still eventually will cause the CPU to hit 25% again and again.

I've tried fbreader (and even okular with the mobibook extension) which both open and display the same books that cause calibre problems with no issue.
I very much prefer ebookviewer as I'm so used to it and would like to solve this problem.

Any ideas what may be causing it?

Last edited by bhrgunatha (2017-06-23 12:18:07)

bhrgunatha · 2017-06-21 15:14:37

As a workaround downgrading qt5-webkit to version qt5-webkit-5.9.0-1 fixes the issue
So I've pinned that in my pacman.conf. Hopefully the next version will behave better - the current version is named as alpha -qt5-webkit-5.212.0alpha2-1. Not sure what to make of that.
I don't consider a downgrade a solution though so I'll leave this open in the hope that anyone else with the similar issue will see it and maybe a real solution will appear.

marfig · 2017-06-22 02:48:41

FYI, Calibre is one of the extremely few applications I don't install from the repos. I prefer the author advised method of installation and updating that has never failed me. For what is worth, I always pretended Calibre is just one application that doesn't exist on the repos or AUR and have it ignored on my pacman.conf.

bhrgunatha · 2017-06-22 14:00:23

Thanks for that suggestion - it works like a charm even with the latest qt5-webkit!

Scimmia · 2017-06-22 16:04:00

That's because the author bundles a bunch of crap. Arch doesn't do stupid things like that if we can avoid it.

marfig · 2017-06-22 17:17:08

Scimmia wrote:

That's because the author bundles a bunch of crap. Arch doesn't do stupid things like that if we can avoid it.

Excellent timing for such a comment, coming from a build that doesn't work.

Scimmia · 2017-06-22 17:26:39

And the best answer is to introduce all kinds of extra disk usage, memory usage, and security problems instead of fixing the ACTUAL problem, right?

marfig · 2017-06-22 18:29:43

[2034] [~] $ sudo ps_mem | grep calibre
[sudo] password for rahtgaz: 
  7.5 MiB +   2.9 MiB =  10.4 MiB	calibre-parallel
173.0 MiB +   6.0 MiB = 179.1 MiB	calibre

# opening books, various screens and scrolling around Calibre
[2041] [~] $ for i in {1..10}; do ps -p 5728 -o %cpu,cmd; sleep 5; done
%CPU CMD
 3.1 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.4 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.6 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.8 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.8 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.8 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.9 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 3.9 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach
%CPU CMD
 4.1 /opt/calibre/bin/calibre --detach

I am overwhelmed at Calibre consumption of memory and CPU. I may need an upgrade from my 4GB memory and 7 year old i7 processor.

Scimmia wrote:

security problems

Should I settle for FUD, or are you going to elaborate?

Last edited by marfig (2017-06-22 18:31:07)

Scimmia · 2017-06-22 20:11:46

If you don't understand the security implications of bundled libs, do some research. I'm not going to spoon feed you.

marfig · 2017-06-22 23:05:04

Scimmia wrote:

If you don't understand the security implications of bundled libs, do some research. I'm not going to spoon feed you.

Oh, but I do. I can identify them as well as I can vague overstatements followed by a straw man.
But hey! It's all good. I'm done.

bhrgunatha · 2017-06-23 12:17:48

Scimmia wrote:

And the best answer is to introduce all kinds of extra disk usage, memory usage, and security problems instead of fixing the ACTUAL problem, right?

I've removed the [Solved] flag because I think you're right.
It does seem like a bug between the Arch package qt5webit (as I said marked as alpha!) and calibre.

According to the github repo QtWebKit 5.212.0 Alpha 2 it's is pre-release.
I think maybe the package maintainer has been a bit premature.

For now I'm rolling back my version to qt5-webkit-5.9.0-1.

loqs · 2017-06-23 12:28:12

https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 28656.html covers why the switch was made.

eschwartz · 2017-06-25 05:41:42

calibre doesn't "bundle a bunch of crap". The calibre standalone binaries are, well, prebuilt standalone binaries, and there are plenty of good reasons for such a thing to exist. e.g. those bundled libs are probably more up to date than what you'd get on some old Debian/Ubuntu system that is apparently still supported. (Granted, this doesn't apply to Arch Linux.)

Regardless... qt5-webkit-ng was merged into qt5-webkit upstream, and either way the calibre developer was planning on switching at some point, so relying on the fact that the prebuilt calibre binaries do not yet come with annulen's qt5-webkit updates doesn't seem like much of a long-term plan.

Consider instead, working with upstream to figure out why qt5-webkit-ng is having these problems...

Last edited by eschwartz (2017-06-25 05:45:20)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-06-19 18:09:55

Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#2 2017-06-21 15:14:37

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#3 2017-06-22 02:48:41

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#4 2017-06-22 14:00:23

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#5 2017-06-22 16:04:00

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#6 2017-06-22 17:17:08

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#7 2017-06-22 17:26:39

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#8 2017-06-22 18:29:43

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#9 2017-06-22 20:11:46

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#10 2017-06-22 23:05:04

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#11 2017-06-23 12:17:48

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#12 2017-06-23 12:28:12

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

#13 2017-06-25 05:41:42

Re: Calibre 3 - ebookviewer unusable for many mobi files.

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