2.0rc2 upgrade caused unwanted linking between artifacts

Moved from FF3.5.7 to 3.6 on WinXP Pro (on Parallels on OS X 10.6) then installed Z rc2 and upgraded my DB.

By chance, I was looking at a record in Z (book) that I had added just prior to the upgrade (at least I thought I had, hence the reason for checking).

The book was there. HOWEVER, attached to the book record (i.e. a + sign appears next the the book record which can be clicked on to expand the record) was a picture file (BMP). Who knows where it got it from or why it made the connection. I never added it to the record.

I looked for the photo file and found a jpg file of the same image but not a BMP file. I don't expect Z on the upgrade to take a jpg file, convert it to BMP and attach it to some other record (if in fact that's what happened).

Seems mighty bizarre.

Needless to say, I've moved back to FF3.5.7 and Z1.10 (restoring my Z folder from backup), in spite of assurances that rc2 is fine, for this and other reasons. The book record in 1.10 does not have the photo file attached.
  • I don't expect Z on the upgrade to take a jpg file, convert it to BMP and attach it to some other record
    It didn't.

    Can you reproduce this?
  • I didn't think that Z would be into image conversions but it was just a little weird. the BMP file must be around somewhere but Apple Spotlight doesn't find it (all my keeper files used in WinXP are kept on an OS X drive).

    I'll have a shot of brandy tonight and give it a try -- see if the file gets linked again, though I don't hold out much hope, it's just too bizarre. If it doesn't happen this go around, having seen it once, it doesn't leave me with much assurance that some other record (I've got likely 1000 or so) has not been corrupted.

    I'll report back.
  • you didn't lose any data, though, right?
    The most plausible scenario would just seem that you dragged the file to FF/Zotero accidentally - I mean, lost data or a malfunctioning database, that would be explicable, but added images? That just doesn't sound like database corruption.
  • I didn't lose any data as I have a backup which I reverted to. I have no idea if any data was lost during the upgrade to rc2. I don't think the inadvertant dragging was a culprit. I know, it doesn't make sense to me either.

    Going forward, unless I verify each record following an upgrade to Z 2.0 I'll have no idea if I've lost any data.

    It would be delightful if there was an audit tool that one could run post-upgrade that would do a record-by-record comparison of the records before and after the upgrade (the source directory structures could be left intact to facilitate this).

    Short of that would be a logging feature which actually logged for each record transitioned that it was successful or not.

    How have the developers accomplished testing for this? I can't imagine them not having such a tool.
  • Frit,

    Hundreds of thousands of people use Zotero every day, and no one has ever encountered anything like what you're reporting. Moreover, what you're describing simply isn't possible given the design of the software, which as you are probably aware is open source and subject to great scrutiny.

    I'm going to go ahead and close this thread. If at some later point you can duplicate the problem, please feel free to open another thread and provide steps to reproduce it. Please also note that soon after Zotero 2.0 ends its development phase, we will discontinue support for Zotero 1.0.x.
This discussion has been closed.