Stanza - iPhone Backup doesn't finish
About Us | Site Map | RSS Feeds | Media Info | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2009 Lexcycle, Inc. All rights reserved. 
About Us | Site Map | RSS Feeds | Media Info | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2009 Lexcycle, Inc. All rights reserved.
respond this topic
Don't have enough money to buy a building? Worry no more, just because this is possible to take the loans to work out such problems. Thus take a financial loan to buy all you require.
BACK UP FUNCTION
I AM A WORKING MOTHER AND I HAVE I DOWNLOADED A COUPLE OF HUNDRED EBOOKS, I AM FRUSTRATED BY THE FACT THAT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG WITH STANZA OR IPOD TOUCH/IPHONE THAT WE HAVE TO RESTORE FROM A BACKUP. EVERYBODY KNOWS RESTORING FROM A BACKUP CAUSES A MANY PROBLEMS AND END UP SETTING UP AS A KNEW IPOD TOUCH/IPHONE. I WOULD LIKE A SEPERATE BACKUP FUNCTION THAT YOU CAN DO FROM WITHIN STANZA. THERE ARE MANY APPS AVAILABLE WITH THIS FUNCTION FOR EXAMPLE AMBIANCE, IT IS A MP3 RELAXING MUSIC APP THAT BACKSUP YOUR DOWNLOADS INCASE OF ANY PROBLEMS. PLEASE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING FOR THIS FUNCTION AND MAYBY STANZA WILL LISTEN TO OUR NEEDS. THIS IS A FUNCTION I NEED NOT WANT. PLEASE STANZA MAKE THIS AVAILABLE AND I WOULD RATE YOU 5 STARS
The plot thickens
From Apple's customer support pages: (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766)
"
iTunes will back up the following information:
...
With iPhone 2.0 and later
...
* App Store Application data (except the Application itself, its tmp and Caches folder).
"
This would seem to indicate there is a per-application tmp and cache folder. Is that correct or not? If it's correct, then why not use one of those folders to store the data in question?
I'd really appreciate an answer to this thread. It's not like it's a non-issue. If this hasn't been addressed yet, tehn say so. It's not the end of the world. If it has, then we have to look more deeply into it.
Thanks.
This is why..
I don't have many books on Stanza but I can see where this can be a huge burden on anyone who has a large collection of books. This is why it is so important that Stanza find a way to let users download the books onto their computer. I'm lucky that the books I have, I also have on my computer. I only keep a few books on Stanza and when I'm done reading them, I simply delete them. Hopefully they can work it out so that sometime soon, we will be able to do this!
Don't be too harsh....
While I agree with much of your post, don't be too eager to judge. The developers at Lexcycle have committed to addressing the problem in the next release (see the earlier posts in this thread), so the problem is one of (hopefully) limited duration.
Virtually every user of Stanza has a different idea of how it "should" work, and the usage model that it should be optimized around. Like yourself, I tend to go the "stand alone" route, where I load a few hundred ebooks onto the device and then read from there. Stanza, however, appears to have been initially developed around the usage model of a network-connected device (as in iPhone), which had more or less immediate access to a large on-line catalog of content that could be downloaded at will. In that model, there really wasn't a great need for managing a large local library. We're trying to use the product in a way that (apparently) wasn't part of the initial design criteria - and there are inadequacies. They're being fixed (if not always as quickly as we want), but there are still shortcomings.
There are a number of workarounds for some of the issues you've raised. The issue of having to download files one at a time has been addressed via the "download all" capability on the handheld device and the ability (via DiskAid) to bulk download ePub files to the handheld for import into Stanza. While not the most elegant solution, it works - and I expect that things will improve with time. The inadequacies of the Stanza desktop product have been eased somewhat by the introduction of Calibre, a utility which shows a great deal of promise. It is my opinion that the Stanza development team would probably find it a more productive use of their time to focus their efforts on the handheld device, as Calibre bids fair to take up the slack on the desktop. The backup issue is certainly an annoying one, but is being worked through - and for a *FREE* application, I don't feel that they've done too badly.
The folks at Lexcycle have been pretty responsive to our needs, and are working towards maturing their product. They've been in an extremely awkward position of late, caught between the holes in the design model for Apple's handheld devices (which were clearly never designed as ebook readers), the demands of the user community (I've been one of the most vocal), competition from other providers, and though they've never given any indication of it, I suspect that Amazon (who purchased Lexcycle) has been handing down a few mandates from above as well. Never forget, Amazon has quite a vested interest in maintaining the current (if not defining their own) usage model for the industry, and I suspect that in the long term an open-format, non-DRM requiring reader in general usage may not be in their best interests. I don't think that we need to be watching for Stanza to become Kindle/iPod anytime soon, but we'd be fools not to be aware of the potential. I would be more comfortable if Stanza had been developed under the Mozilla/GNU type of framework myself, without the market-driven influences likely to affect the future of the product, but you can't have everything.
On the whole, I'm quite pleased with the product - and as it matures, it has the potential to get quite a bit better than it already is. There are still some holes, but they're being addressed. I'd have been happier if Lexcycle could have remained independant, retailing their product to fund the company rather than being acquired, but the Amazon acquisition doesn't appear to have made that much of a difference so far.
Thanks to the guys and girls at Lexcycle - you've been good to work with.
Even if not backup Stanza wuill still eat the valuable resource
Hi All,
I do have the same problem with backup and forced to remove stanza from Iphone. Pity I found so many books and just loved this application.
And I agree with the comments that Stanza dev team should do something about it.
But what I don't get is this
I have just 2 GB out of 8 used.
Even if one transfers all 2 GB as is with no processing over USB 2.0 it takes 1-2 minutes.
How come Itunes can't complete the backup in couple of days having multiple small files in it's filesystem.
Something is wrong in Itunes backup procedure
Most likely they create the single backup file on the Iphone device with lot's of sophisticated analyses (like delta ) vs just transfering the image of the disk and that's it.
Some suggestion for Stanza Dev team
non backup solution is fine but at the same time will still eat the valuable disk space resource on the iphone.
One can't read the multiple books at a time in Stanza, only one at a time
Why don't you create the cache for the open book only and destroy it after someone opens the other book?
You still can have single file where you keep all bookmarks for the books and even cache for cover images
That would allow you to keep all books in zip and have only currently active book in unzipped format.
You won't sacrifice the response time of the currently active book and just delay not significantly the Open/Close process which is not big sacrifice imho.
Yes I realize it will require to rewrite all procedures that save settings bookmarks etc for all books etc to store it in a single xml file
But it is not a big deal IMHO had to be done this way first place ;) :) no offence
iPhone 3.1, backups, and large libraries
I am starting to regret my wife convincing me to switch to iPhone. I love and appreciate Stanza for supporting multiple formats (PDB, LIT, PDF, etc). However, Stanza has too many shortcomings, as does (cr)Apple.
I hate the backup process. After 24 hours, I killed it; I will have to remove Stanza and all my books to get a timely backup - WITHOUT a full backup you can not install any updated software. If I remove Stanza, then doing a reload of my library will take forever (and a day). I hate getting books from my PC to the iPhone, open each one and use the wireless sharing feature to transfer; this is good for a few and not good for many. My HP PDA did not have a filesystem lock out like APPLE and it did not to have the reader do the file transfer, one book at a time from the desktop. Just copy LIT(s) to any directory or use MOBI to send the book(s) to the PDA.
From the sounds of other people, I, too, like to have a large library at my disposal. The Internet does not necessarily have content as readily available as I do in the many reference books I like to carry. Wikipedia is nothing more than Funk and Wagnels online - okay to get a quick and unsubstantiated answer - however, not valid for any type of valid research.
Hey, I like to read - plain and simple. The nonsense of the thought of carrying just 50 or so e-books is ridiculous. The "e" is for electronic that should be "EZ". The point of digital is...
With thousands of books and thousands of CD's, and space available on a PDA, why should I, the user, be limited.
Last point...As a developer, one should know the limits of the platform he/she is developing for. I develop on Microsoft, Oracle, Java for Windows, Unix, MacOS and I have to be aware and sensitive to the issues each platform and delivery method poses. I have to create solutions that are within the limits of the platform being used. Get it? While I agree that Apple and their product has limitations, I would think that Lexcycle would try to create a much better tool from such a wealth of common feedback as I have seen here.
2 things: being able to move larger volumes of books to the device and being easier to do so, and changing the behavior of Stanza to balance the Apple backup issues. If it takes an app a few more seconds to open and 30 hours less to backup, what do you think the user will opt for?
I really hope that the developer takes these constructive comments and those of others seriously. It sounds like most people want and like Stanza.
Thank you.
"The nonsense of the thought
"The nonsense of the thought of carrying just 50 or so e-books is ridiculous."
"With thousands of books and thousands of CD's, and space available on a PDA, why should I, the user, be limited."
Maybe you need a different program/hardware device to meet your needs. Let us know when you find that "unlimited" device.
Personally, the thought of carrying 50 or so e-Books seems extravagant to me, and I love reading too. My library is right there on my computer, and uploading 5-6 novels, a film or two, and some music for a trip isn't a big deal.
I don't see the iPhone/iPod Touch as a repository for all my data-it is a portable device that connects to my main library of music, films, and now books.
"The nonsense of the thought"
Look at the front page of Lexcycle's site. I quote:
"Reading revolutionized.
Forget carrying around stacks of books for school, work, or vacation. Stanza on your iPhone or iPod lets you hold a lifetime’s worth of reading in your pocket or handbag. Whether on a plane or waiting in line, your books are only a tap away."
I love stanza and am looking forward anxiously to their next release when they have committed to fixing this problem so I can have all the books I want and still back up my ipod in my lifetime.
Hopefully they'll also provide a method to archive one's stanza e-books in a human usable format onto one's desktop in the same release.
Load times are no excuse
- First, keeping around lots of files for each book is simply not a good practice. This has nothing to do with Apple's procedure: Apple's procedure simply makes the problem visible.
- Second, there are ways to access the content of those files other than having them unpacked around. A zip file is just another way data is stored, like a filesystem, and there are drivers to just read them in-place instead of unpacking them. I don't know if such drivers are available for the iPhone, though. But there is also SQLite, a database, where the data could be stored optimally and retreived on-demand.
- Third, if there is no alternative, at least limit the number of unpacked files. Allow up to 1000 files, for instance. If a book needs to be opened and is not already, see if it has more than the maximum amount of files allowed. if so, open it in a temporary folder or something. If not, unpack it to the cache. If the cache is full, discard the older unpacked files until it has enough space. Voila.
- Stanza is very good, but this behaviour is intolerable. Before saying that Apple's backup is 'broken' or hypothesizing what people would do if whatever, try to think for a moment and realise that you wouldn't want a guest in your house if said guest kept scattering everything out of your drawers and wardrobes and cupboards into the floor - would you say then that it was the cleaning person's fault that your house was in a mess, or that visitors that now complain about not being able to move from one room to another would otherwise complain about taking them too long to get a spoon if they had to get it from the spoon's drawer?
You should provide some kind
You should provide some kind of organizational system by which your guests belongings stay in the own area and no one else ever has to see all their stuff.
There is such a system. The
There is such a system. The problem is that the guest in question registered to have all their belongings inventoried each time you clean the house.
Analogies aside, could the store-the-unpacked-data-in-tmp spossibility I mentioned earlier not work? Unless Apple has no such tmp location available, I don't see why it shouldn't.
Or keep everything in a temporary folder
I don't know if the iPhone has any kind of temporary files folder that doesn't get backed up, but if it does - as it should - then just keep the unpacked files there! If the folder is emptied, then just recreate them from the originals. I suppose the impact of implementing this should be minimal.
Metadata which is not part of the book itself - mostly, chnages made by the user - should be kept separately from the book, obviously in a backupable location, but at most that should be one file per book (ok, maybe more if you spend your time getting alternate covers for your books).
Storing the unpacked version
Storing the unpacked version in a non-backed-up folder is the solution we are going to implement. For a variety of reasons it isn't trivial, but we expect to have it in place for the next version.
2.0 still seems to suffer
Since the Library/x/yzw part of the path is the same for a lot of files, I presume it refers to the book, for each there being a number of associated files. In other words, in my mdi.txt file above there end up being quite many repeated lines, since only the common (book) part of the path was stored there. Now, the second of the commands I typed above tells us that the mdi.txt has 8424 lines, which means as much stanza-related files; whereas the third counts only unique lines, which means 622 books. Subtracting 1 from both counts, since there seems to be a special 'Cookies' entry there, that means 621 books imply at least 8423 files. I say 'at least', because since the backup didn't finish, a number of duplicate lines may be missing from my file. Now that's an average of 13/14 files per book. Since the book itself is at least one file, that's 12/13 files more per book than I'd like to backup.
In short, I was under the impression that the cache would be moved to a non-backed-up location, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I've since been explained how non-trivial that is, but I'd like to know nonetheless what steps have been taken to solve this problem, and whether I can expect a solution or not.
I've even suggested before that there could be a 'clear cache' button in the preferences. It could then be recreated as needed, per book on first use. I think it would be quite a reasonable compromise for whoever has the slow-backup problem. Which I can only think is everyone using Stanza with other than a small library. Don't forget many of us may discover books while browsing the catalogs and download them for future reading lest we forget them or where we saw them. It's not a matter of pack-rat mentality - that would be if not finding those books again were not actually quite likely.
2.0 still seems to suffer
Hi.
I'd been looking forward to the next (now current) version of Stanza, and I must say I'm absolutely dazzled by all the wonderful work you've done there. It's not just the revamping (I'm sure someone can still find ways to improve the current UI, though if you ask me both the new one and the old one are superb), it's the little details (such as finally being able to lock the screen in landscape mode and leave it that way always, being able to use a whole lot of fonts that weren't there before...). So, just for the record, congratulations on this awesome work.
However, as regards the backup problem, I seem to be having the same behaviour as before. I haven't even finished a complete backup because the one I tried had to be interrupted after more than 12 hours.
So I went to the backup folder and tried to see just what files were there. After looking at a couple of .mdinfo files, I decided to run the following:
$ for x in *.mdinfo; do grep -oaE "Library.*stanz" $x; done | grep -o Library....... > mdi.txt
$ cat mdi.txt | wc -l
8424
$ cat mdi.txt | sort -u | wc -l
622
The first line lists the occurrences of the word 'Library' plus some characters in mdinfo files (there is at most one such sequence per file). The 'for' is needed because the files are too many just to grep the whole lot directly.
So the file mdi.txt ends up with the following lines:
Library/4/564.
Library/9/509.
......
Each line seems to be part of a file's path on the iphone; the data stored in the mdinfo is actually like
bplist00? XMetadata[IsEncryptedWVersion[AuthVersion^StorageVersionO?bplist00TPathWVersionXGreylistVDomain_Documents/Library/8/908.thumbS3._AppDomain-com.lexcycle.stanz'.NRS S3.0S1.(0
I don't get
Hi All,
I do have the same problem with backup and forced to remove stanza from Iphone. Pity I found so many books and just loved this application.
And I agree with the comments that Stanza dev team should do something about it.
But what I don't get is this
I have just 2 GB out of 8 used.
Even if one transfers all 2 GB as is with no processing over USB 2.0 it takes 1-2 minutes.
How come Itunes can't complete the backup in couple of days having multiple small files in it's filesystem.
Something is wrong in Itunes backup procedure
Most likely they create the single backup file on the Iphone device with lot's of sophisticated analyses (like delta ) vs just transfering the image of the disk and that's it.
Some suggestion for Stanza Dev team
non backup solution is fine but at the same time will still eat the valuable disk space resource on the iphone.
One can't read the multiple books at a time in Stanza, only one at a time
Why don't you create the cache for the open book only and destroy it after someone opens the other book?
You still can have single file where you keep all bookmarks for the books and even cache for cover images
That would allow you to keep all books in zip and have only currently active book in unzipped format.
You won't sacrifice the response time of the currently active book and just delay not significantly the Open/Close process which is not big sacrifice imho.
Yes I realize it will require to rewrite all procedures that save settings bookmarks etc for all books etc to store it in a single xml file
But it is not a big deal IMHO had to be done this way first place ;) :) no offence
Perfect
I think that's the best solution - though you may consider having a 'delete cache' button in case anyone complains later on that stanza is taking up too much space on the device (I won't). It's a pity that it isn't trivial - as I said, I know next to nothing of the iPhone's internals - but if you can pull it then it's one more proof you're absolutely the best out there. Keep on going!
This needs to be fixed
I had to do a new backup of my wife's iPhone last night. She has 117 books in Stanza. The backup began at midnight. The Stanza portion of the backup began 12:30a and finished at 6:30a. The entire backup finished at 6:42a. Of the 18,000 files created by the backup, 15,000 came from Stanza. This is ridiculous. By comparison, I have eReader installed with 50 books on my iPhone. I checked my log and it took about 30 minutes to backup my eReader books and they have far fewer files.
I disagree with the assertion that this is a problem with Apple's backup. The fact that my wife has an iPhone where the Stanza app appears to be responsible for almost 90% of the files present is unacceptable. No application should be that "hoggy." If this were a desktop OS and a single application was creating that many files (proportionally), it'd be killed in a moment.
Stanza is a great program, but you need to reconsider how it's written. No other ebook reader that I know of creates this many files. The fact that every book is "exploded" is ridiculous. I'm going to leave a 1-star review on the App Store and encourage my wife to find a way to get rid of Stanza.
I really do appreciate what you all did when the App Store first rolled out. Stanza was a much-needed app back then. In fact, I wish you continued success. You deserve it for what you did early on. At the same time, now that I see what's happening, I refuse to support an app that turns 117 books into 15,000 files. That's just asking for something bad to happen.
Well backups were ok for speed for a while
I was really impressed when I updated stanza for the iPhone a while back and my iTunes backups suddenly started to only take an hour (which for 800 or so books, I thought was reasonable) instead of 12hrs. That's all changed with the latest iPhone OS which came out last week. After the OS upgrade, the next sync has so far taken 36 hrs and it's about 1/2 way though. It appears Apple has broken things again! Hope the Stanza team can come up with a fix again.
G++
Rename some epubs to .zip
Rename some epubs to .zip sometime and see how many files it actually takes to make one book, particularly one with lots of chapters and images. If stanza didn't unzip them all in advance people would be constantly complaining about load times.
This was my earlier
This was my earlier suggestion:
"Is it not possible for Stanza to store them in epub format? It's much easier to back-up 500 files compared to 10,000 (assuming an approximate 15 chapters/html per book plus support files-cover, stylesheet, etc). If it's because the iPhone's processor is slow, how about exploding the epub file when it's opened and deleting the temporary files afterwards? Perhaps you could keep the last 5 read books exploded and the temporary files for the earliest ebook read is deleted when a new ebook is opened."
Right now, it seems Stanza explodes the files right after you download them. Personally, I'd rather have slightly longer initial loading times than do all that waiting during downloading. The unpacking doesn't really seem to take all that long. Sure, it'll add a few seconds when you first open a book, but subsequent loads should go by faster.
App store blackmail is the
App store blackmail is the silliest blackmail.
Backup (Large Library)
Hi,
I also have a similar issue with the backups, they take ages (and I have never bothered to complete one) and form the commentrs here it sounds like I am going to have issues. (I have a library of around 500 books)
Any suggestions? (Apart from delete the books)
kspn
This is a reply for everyone,
This is a reply for everyone, by the way. Those faint of heart or who haven't jailbroken their device should read NO FURTHER.
I'm a newbie and came here to ask a related question. Until something is done regarding this backing up issue, you can do the following, but only if you've jailbroken :
1) From Cydia, install Openssh, and the SBSettings SSH toggle so you can enable/disable it later at will.
2) Find and download Putty for windows.
3) Enter your phone's IP address into Putty, leaving everything as default, and click Open.
4) If asked about a host key, just accept it.
5) A black window should open, prompting you for your login credentials.
type "root" for login/user id, and "alpine" for the password. Lower case on both, minus the quotes.
6) Now type the following VERBATIM, exactly as written, paying attention to upper/lower case. Anything in (BRACKETS) is a comment and should NOT be typed in :
cd /var/
mkdir Media
cd Media
mkdir Stanza
chown -R mobile:mobile Stanza
cd /var/mobile/Applications
find * | grep anza
------
At this point you will see a load of text like this :
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-clouds.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-crumpled-paper.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-dark-brick.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-dark-paper.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-dark-wood.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-desert-rock.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B/Stanza.app/texture-green-marble.png
ECD433FE-D172-48B4-81D5-B0CEC581156B is the directory where Stanza is, and will be refered to next as StanzaDir.
Continue with the verbatim typing below the dotted line. Note that when you do the first command, instead of typing in the entire tedious directory name, simply type "cd ECD4" and press tab - this will autocomplete.
------
cd StanzaDir
cd Documents
cd Library
mv * /var/Media/Stanza/
cd ..
mv Library ./Library.Original (rename in linux)
ln -s /var/Media/Stanza ./Library
-----
Now type "ls -al" and hit return.
You should see the following line :
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root mobile 17 Aug 11 19:56 Library -> /var/Media/Stanza/
Type "chown -R mobile:mobile Library" to change the ownership to the 'mobile' user.
Now load up Stanza. Your library should still be there.
Now go to your itunes backup folder - rename/move the existing one somewhere temporarily, and try to perform a clean backup.
It works but it doesn't
I ran through this and have found that it works brilliantly ... mostly.
The issue I have found is that I cannot get new books, I get an error message about being unable to move the books to the library.
I have checked and double checked the permissions and links.
I can read the books still and i can edit the book information for existing books. I just cannot add new ones.
Any ideas (apart from move the books back after doing the backup, which would invalidate the whole point from my point of view)
Sorry...
Sorry... but unfortunately, deleting Stanza is pretty much the only option. Unless you're willing to wait maybe 2~3 days for the backup to finish...
I was in a similar situation (~500+ ebooks). After more than 24 hours, back-up was only at ~50%. I needed to use my phone so I cancelled the back-up. Afterwards, I just took screenshots of all the ebooks in my library, re-downloaded them on my computer, deleted Stanza and updated my iPhone. Having to take maybe ~80 screenshots was tedious but it's better than having an unusable phone for 2~3 days.
Thanks for this thread and the great user posts!
Also, thanks for Stanza support folks, too!
I was having this problem... first, after I had re-installed my laptop OS, the fresh backup of my i-device took over 6 hours! Subsequent backups were back to being fairly speedy until today!
Then, I remembered I had done two things this morning... transferred over 300 RTF files to Docs to Go, and downloaded 30-40 ebooks for Stanza. The combination lead to a nearly 1 hour backup, but that's an inflated figure as I was also copying files to a server and surfin' the Internet at the same time!
It's a classic Catch-22... the backup is taking a long time, so rather than sit there, one starts doing other computer chores.. and that just makes the backup take even longer! It's probably better to got read a real book or sit outside or garden or do household chores for a while instead! :)
Count me in as another satisfied Stanza user who would like to see the multiple files per ebook problem solved! My i-device backup folder has over 22,000 files in it!
Itunes Backup Test with Stanza
Thanks for making such a great app, by the way.
I just really wanted to share this info with you.
I have Approximately (1004) ebook on my iPod Touch in Stanza and deciced to see just how long the backup would take. So I started on Saturday at 11:00 am and it is now Sunady Evening at 8:27 pm 33 1/2 hour later and it is still backing up. The backup folder 51,705 files in it and counting & the size is 979 MB and counting. Good thing I also have an iPod Classic. I will keep you posted on just how long it takes to finally backup the unit.
Question, is there any
Question, is there any consideration with regards to changing the way Stanza stores ebooks on the iPhone? Right now, I reckon it's not much of a problem for most people. They just download Stanza but don't really use it and download a lot of books.
However, a lot of avid readers are considering the iPhone/iPod Touch as an alternative to dedicated ebook readers and for them, this is a serious flaw. It's impractical to delete your entire ebook library every time you upgrade the firmware or replace your iPhone. In the Kindle app, it's not much of a problem since it does batch downloads of purchased books. With Stanza, it's a pain trying to rebuild your collection, specially considering some of the ebooks came from online catalogs and you have no local copy.
The slow backup isn't really
The slow backup isn't really Stanza's fault, but an inefficiency in how iTunes does the backups. That being said, we are considering ways we might be able to reduce the slowness for the next version of Stanza.
Until then, though, large libraries will be slow to backup. Fortunately, once the backup completes once, subsequent backups should be faster.
This is a complete showstopper
I'm sorry, but this is just not acceptable. In practice, if you have Stanza installed and more than a couple of books there, any iPhone backup will take ages. We're talking entire days here.
Can't Stanza just use a zip filesystem driver to mount ePub files instead of unpacking them? Or else, store the data in SQLite? As an alternative, allow the user to clear the unpacked files - supposing an original ePub version is kept. In any case, if files need to be unpacked, they should only be unpacked on first reading. And no, I wouldn't worry about people complaining that it takes long to open files the first time - what are those people going to do, ditch Stanza for the many alternatives out there?
You could also limit the number of unpacked files - say, to 1000, which is already too much - if you need to save more unpacked files, delete some of the oldest.
I have 200 books loaded into
I have 200 books loaded into Stanza on my iPhone and the backup only takes minutes. I am sure there is some other factor at play other than simply the number of books.
I think it's an incremental
I think it's an incremental backup; if you downloaded and opened those 200 books all at once and then ran a backup it might take days to finish. If you ran a backup after each one you probably wouldn't notice anything.
If everything was kept zipped
If everything was kept zipped then everyone complaining about long backup times would be complaining about long load times and demanding that Stanza be modified to unzip everything right away. The broken thing is Apple's backup procedure, not Stanza.
Just to be sure, I'm using
Just to be sure, I'm using the latest Stanza with the 3.0 firmware and iTunes 9/mac. This has always happened (since 2.0 and whatever iTunes existed at the time, I didn't have an iPhone before 2.0), no matter what the versions of the various softwares involved, so I don't think it has anything at all to do with OS 3.1 (which I don't have).
Slow backup of Stanza files
I've also noticed that when I have a large number of books the backup is intolerably slow. The number of files backed up is about 80 per book, so it must be something about the way the books are stored on the phone.
Long Backups
The reason why the backup never finishes is becuase, 809 ebooks on iPod Touch = 6 hours of back and still not finished. I removed all of my apps except Stanza trying to preserve my ebooks that I did not purchases from Fictionwise (which I loaded using the Desktop Component) and tried the backup again. It still did not finish after 10 hours, I had to cancel it. Once I removed the Stanza app and data, the backup took less than 2 minutes. Added back in all of my music, apps and ereader with my original 288 books, the sync and backup took 3 - 4 minutes. Please update the Desktop Component to do a bulk upload to the iPod. I can't use your app effectively, if I can't atleast easily upload my books, should I have to delete the app again. Aslo adding a feature to preserve my customization should you have to delete the app and reinstall it would be great. I lost some15 customized categories and 25 customized subjects.
You could always resist the
There is also the option to resist the packrat urge and just have only 50 so of your most important books handy at all times.
Too Many Ebooks
It's not a packrat urge, its a case of never knowing which book I want to read and if I have the corresponding audiobook to listen to instead on my touch. I exclusively do most of my ready on my touch and buy very few hard covered books. I like me entire library at my figner tips.
Updating my iPhone to OS 3.0
Updating my iPhone to OS 3.0 and I thought iTunes hanged during back up. When I checked the folder where iTunes stores the back ups, I noticed the number of files are still increasing so I guess it just takes a really, really long time because I've probably got a million files on my iPhone (500+ ebooks accumulated over time). I've got 874MB files categorized as "Other", majority of which, I'm betting, is related to Stanza. Back up folder's only at 100MB at the moment so I've still got several hours to go before update finishes.
My question is, how come Stanza stores the "epub" files in exploded format? I've been wondering why it takes quite a while to delete ebooks, but if you have to delete 20 files or more everytime you delete an ebook, then I guess that must be the reason. Is it not possible for Stanza to store them in epub format? It's much easier to back-up 500 files compared to 10,000 (assuming an approximate 15 chapters/html per book plus support files-cover, stylesheet, etc). If it's because the iPhone's processor is slow, how about exploding the epub file when it's opened and deleting the temporary files afterwards? Perhaps you could keep the last 5 read books exploded and the temporary files for the earliest ebook read is deleted when a new ebook is opened.
thanks
Hi All very good workss...özel ders you know is this job...I think you make a good works...ruhum
Stanza, long long backup times
Prior to installing Stanza and Shakespeare, my backup times were normal. After installing these two applications, my backup times sored... 4 to 5 hours....
After deleting both applications... my problem is gone... Backup takes a swift 20 minutes
Raymond
Do you know the approximate
Do you know the approximate number of books you had in your Stanza library? I.e., does just having Stanza on the device increase the backup time, or did you have a lot of books installed?
Update
I now can confirm that the number of files causes this issue:
Backup with Stanza: estimated > 8000 files in backup, backup (up to 40%: 45 minutes)
Backup without Stanza: 1588 files in backup, backup in 6 minutes.
So: don't be too greedy (as I was) downloading 100 books all at once. Hope this helps.
Kind regards, Johan
I noticed the same as Ganymede
I had Stanza installed for a few weeks now and all iPhone backups went smoothly until I installed a larger number of books a few days ago (~100 classics). Now i'm running my first synchronisation since installing these books and indeed the backup process seems to last forever.
I've read the backup process could get 'confused' from time to time, but something relating to Stanza seems to trigger ultra slow backups.
Perhaps it is not the size of the files involved, but the number of files.
On investigating the files written to the Backup folder, I've noticed many files of a few Kb that when opened in Text Editor show that they contain one chapter of a book.
If the iPhone backup process involves detecting changes in each of the files, a high number of files (100 books x ~15 chapters = 1500 files) could explain why the process takes this long.
As I'm writing this, the backup seems to be somewhere around 40%, backup folder contains 3250 files already (of course how many relate to Stanza I can't tell).
Nice product by the way!
Kind regards, Johan
Thanks for the feedback. We
Stanza is not a particularly
Stanza is not a particularly large application, so it is not likely to be what is preventing your backup from finishing. Books are actually very, very small -- much smaller than music or picture files -- so unless you also added a thousand books on the day you upgraded to 1.8, the backup speed should not be related to Stanza.
That being said, the backup process for the iPhone seems to be very strange. It sometimes takes longer for me to back up my iPhone than it does for me to backup my entire MacBook Pro. I wonder whether iTunes has a totally blind back-up process for third-party apps, where it just copies over everything rather than trying to figure out what is different and just backing that up. Third-party apps have no control over or insight into the way iTunes backs up.
When I delete Stanza, backup
When I delete Stanza, backup works fine again !?!
Gany
Stanza is not a large
Stanza is not a large application, and as I have said, we have no control over how the backup process works and no insight into how it works. We write our software to conform to Apple's specifications, and that's all we can do.
It's possible that backup time would increase if you had recently downloaded a book that is incredibly huge (e.g., something you had made yourself or got from a catalog like Smashwords that had lots of images or an enormous cover image) or downloaded hundreds of books. That's the only thing I can think of that might have caused this.
Backup
None of my books are that large (only a couple are barely over 1MB), but when there are a lot of books in Stanza, the backup process is DRAMATICALLY lengthened. My total book storage is under 200MB, but backups of my 16GB take 10 minutes without Stanza and a little over an hour with Stanza. It's not the size of the data, it's something else.
I can't post exact numbers as I'm running 3.0 SDK right now and I don't have a 'disk access' application for 3.0 yet, but I think the books total at 165MB for about 319 books.
Do they always take that
Do they always take that long, or just the first time you back up with Stanza installed? Other reports have just said that the first time they back up Stanza it takes a long time, but that subsequent backups aren't affected much.