Below are the summarized issues of the Readarr Metadata Server.
For the latest updates please refer to the pinned messages in the Readarr Discord
¶ The Future and Open Library
It is only anticipated that Open Library will resolve the 'Large Author Issue' and similar GoodRead's Specific Issues
Due to continuous GoodReads issues - work has begun by a community member and is also being poked at by one of the Servarr Development Team members to migrate to OpenLibrary. Note that Readarr effectively has no active developers at this time and given the berth of the project it will be slow moveing. If you wish to assist with this - please visit us on Discord, acquire the Tester role and meet us in the appropiate channel. Please do not ask for updates as that is not productive and updates will be shared as progress progresses.
Per the community user:
The replacement metadata server is close to completion which should resolve the issue for everyone in the meantime. If you're referring to switching to book-based instead of author-based, I don't think that's blocking.
Per the Servarr Team:
Our priority is definitely trying to do this in a way that we do not lose any of the existing libraries - there is a mapping exercise we need to do in the back end to map between goodreads ID and the openlibrary IDs which I believe ISBN is the only solution to at the moment. However this will take a lot of work not just at the metadata server end, but also on the client app end as a migration will be required there for all users to make use of it. This is not a small piece of work due to this.
As per docs you are not allowed to do that, that’s why they provide data dumps.
If you throw all that directly at the source, it's either against their policy, or going to be very expensive
BookInfo is the Servarr Readarr GoodReads Metadata Proxy. Similar to Skyhook for Sonarr.
- Why is the meta server not OSS?
- It is due to the fact that we use goodreads, and they have killed off access to their API, so even if it was OS no one could run it as goodreads will not provide new access to their API
- As Of: 2024-09-14
- Updated: 2024-09-14
Text searches seem to be having a bit of a flaky issue, because it does that search directly on Goodreads to get the ID and then searches the metadata server for that ID. To shortcut the problem, use ID based searches directly.
The metadata server appears to be having some further issues with 429's. There's not much you can do, although doing ID based searches are better than doing text string searches where possible. The devs have been made aware of the issue (which began on the evening of 9/14), and this pin will updated when there is a change in status. If this pin is up, it's still an issue, no need to ask.
- As Of:
2024-05-22 2024-09-14
- Updated: 2024-09-15
- Impact: Log Entries of
BookInfo returned 429, backing off for
- The metadata server appears to be having some further issues with 429's. There's not much you can do, although doing ID based searches are better than doing text string searches where possible. The devs have been made aware of the issue (which began on the evening of 9/14), and this pin will updated when there is a change in status. If this pin is up, it's still an issue, no need to ask.
Readarr's metadata server is getting a lot of rate limiting because of the downtime and everyone's systems hitting it to get list imports, etc. This is expected to slow things down for a week or two until everything is running like normal again. If you're trying to import, or search, etc. and those things are slow or failing, your logs will indicate a 429 error. This will get better. Please have some patience and it will resolve in time.
The metadata server is struggling. Something occurred on 2024-07-31 that caused it, and it hasn't been able to be corrected yet. It works. You will see 429's a LOT. Sometimes it's better than other times. Hopefully it will be corrected soon. When that happens, I will update here. There is nothing you can do to help but wait and be patient. It is not an issue on your end.
The 429 messages are due to a metadata server issue. This impacts all searches for books or authors, imports, list additions, etc. Anything that hits the metadata server.
- The metadata server cannot be self-hosted or changed. The only thing you can do is be patient and wait. It will work, but slowly. There is nothing you can do to help in the meantime.
- It's not you, it's us.
- Please be patient, it will eventually get better, but we have no timeline on when that might happen. The pins, as always, have the most current information and will be updated if/when something changes.
Readarr's metadata server appears to be functioning normally with no 429 or cache issues. As always, I will update this pin if things change. All pins are the current state of readarr and if anything changes, the pins will be updated accordingly.
- As Of: 2024-04-17
- Updated: 2024-09-09
- Impact:
It's functioning, approximately 3 months behind. If you have a book that was added to Goodreads less than 3 months ago, it probably is not going to show up yet.
- As Of: 2023
- Updated: 2024-09-09
- Impact:
- Large authors are still not working, and will not be for a while. A partial, but not exhaustive, list of those authors: Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Fry, Agatha Christie, Arthur C. Clarke, Oscar Wilde, Jack London, Neil Gaiman, Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley, Vladimir Nabokov, Bernard Cornwall, D.H. Lawrence.
- For large authors, you cannot do anything to add either the author OR their individual books. There is no workaround.
- The eventual move from Goodreads to OpenLibrary will resolve this.