Bug 809237

Can you run it from a terminal and see if there is any further output from the conversion?

Also, can you try the latest version from my side repo and see if the problem persists?

su
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/kevin/calibre/fedora-calibre.repo
yum clean all
yum update calibre

It spits this to the xterm I launched it from:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib64/calibre/calibre/gui2/__init__.py", line 340, in dispatch
    self.func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib64/calibre/calibre/gui2/actions/convert.py", line 176, in book_converted
    raise Exception(_('Empty output file, '
Exception: Empty output file, probably the conversion process crashed

(mostly the same thing I got from the 'show details' GUI window...

Version 0.8.45 from your side repo crashes with an almost identical error (it's line 346 in __init.py__ instead of 340).

Does this happen with any epub file? Or just a particular one?

If you use 'ebook-convert foo.epub foo.pdf' from the command line do you get any more output?

I tried a second epub, and ran into the same problem. When I run ebook-convert, I get this:

$ ebook-convert example.epub example.epub example.pdf

1% Converting input to HTML...
InputFormatPlugin: EPUB Input running
on ./example.epub
Found HTML cover titlepage.xhtml
Parsing all content...
34% Running transforms on ebook...
Merging user specified metadata...
Detecting structure...
Flattening CSS and remapping font sizes...
Source base font size is 12.00000pt
Removing fake margins...
Cleaning up manifest...
Trimming unused files from manifest...
Creating PDF Output...
67% Creating PDF Output
The cover image has an id != "cover". Renaming to work around bug in Nook Color
loaded the Generic plugin 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib64/calibre/calibre/ebooks/pdf/writer.py", line 185, in _render_html
    self._render_book()
  File "/usr/lib64/calibre/calibre/ebooks/pdf/writer.py", line 151, in _render_book
    self._write()
  File "/usr/lib64/calibre/calibre/ebooks/pdf/writer.py", line 217, in _write
    outPDF = PdfFileWriter(title=self.metadata.title, author=self.metadata.author)
TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'title'

ok, this is due to calibre depending on it's own bundled pyPdf (which we don't bundle in Fedora). 

I will need to see if I can tweak it to work with the normal pyPdf, or get the changes in the Fedora pyPDF. ;(

The main problem, as I see it, is that calibre's pyPdf version diverges considerably from upstream.

Patching it is not a matter of adjusting a few method signatures here and there - the diff from calibre's version (whichever that is, wasn't able to find out) to F16's pyPdf (1.13) runs to almost 18k. The entire pyPdf source tree, including README and setup.py and whatnot, is 84k.

I've beaten my head against this problem repeatedly for the past couple of years every time it reared its head (which was quite a few times), and unfortunately the only reasonable course of action I've found so far is to simply not drop the bundled pyPdf.

I know this suggestion runs contrary to Fedora's policy of unbundling libraries, but in this case I don't see any other reasonable choice, unless you want to fix the same class problem again and again and again every time the calibre source tree becomes incompatible with the current version of the pyPdf patch.

Should you try to do that - the necessary changes to the spec file are minimal:
  - remove the pyPdf dependency (Requires: pyPdf)
  - remove pyPdf from the list of subdirectories to be deleted from the build tree (this one's towards the end of %install, ~15 lines above %post; search for the comment "# these are provided as separate packages")

Oh, forgot to add: Please don't get calibre's pyPdf changes into Fedora's pyPdf, the API is too different (e.g., the mail class constructor takes an additional required parameter, title) and you'll break and will have to patch every single package using pyPdf :(

Yeah, sadly I'm all too aware of that. 

In order to bundle this, I need an exception from the fedora packaging commitee. 
I'll try and find time to request one and see what they say.

Additional (somewhat unrelated) info:

Beginning with 0.8.49, calibre requires cssutil 0.9.9, which isn't included in Fedora 16 or 17 (and, as far as I can see, neither in rawhide.)

Patching calibre to work with the older version is, as usual, a very annoyuing chose. Should anyone want to get cssutils 0.9.9 included, you can start from this SRPM: http://rpms.limbasan.ro/fedora/16/SRPMS/python-cssutils-0.9.9-1.fc16.src.rpm

Yeah, I filed bug 818799 to ask the maintainer to update... thanks for seeing that. 

The FPC did give me the exception to bundle pyPdf, so thats now fixed in rawhide, and will push out to other releases as they are updated. ;)

Yay, that's very good news indeed, congratulations :)

  Maybe a bit late, but just wanted to confirm that the current version:
calibre-1.27.0-x86_64.tar.bz2 have no problems converting files on Fedora 16. 

It can be downloaded from here: 
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

$  uname -r
3.6.11-4.fc16.x86_64