Syncing is stuck at "Getting updated data from sync server"

dsjolie

dsjolie 5 hours ago:
Syncing is stuck at "Getting updated data from sync server" on Mac OS X 10.6.5. No other information at all. I managed to sync a few weeks (14 days) ago but now after the holidays it does not work. I'm not sure what changed in between.

I had this problem on Firefox 3.6 with Zotero 2.0 but I just tried upgrading to Firefox 4 and Zotero 2.1b2 and the problem seems to be exactly the same.

I'm successfully auto-syncing from a windows computer and I tried shutting that Firefox off for a while just in case of some conflict there, but no joy.

(By the way, maybe you should release a 2.1.b3 with the xpi unzipped to spare everyone of having to find and applying that workaround?)

/Daniel

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Dan Stillman 1 hour ago:
dsjolie: Start a new thread. But you just have a queued download.

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What does that mean? I probably didn't have my mac on when you checked now and my windows system syncs smoothly... Now I have shut down Firefox i Windows and the arrow is spinning as described in Mac OS X... I assume that I would get some error message if there was some network problem? I don't have any network problems otherwise...

/Daniel

dstillman

What does that mean?

http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sync_queuing

I managed to sync a few weeks (14 days) ago but now after the holidays it does not work. I'm not sure what changed in between.

Everyone came back from the holidays and is doing what you're doing, many of them on new computers that need to be fully synced.

You now have a queued download from 75 minutes ago. Don't restart Firefox or you'll lose your place in the queue.

dsjolie

Ok, that makes some sense... I'm pretty sure I had it waiting considerably more than 3 hours yesterday though... And earlier today as well... But I'll try leaving it on over night then...

mronkko

It would be nice if Zotero showed the position in the sync queue on client side. Also, have have you thought about having a small fee for faster sync? In other words, people would donate money that is used to buy more capacity from Amazon (Zotero servers run on Amazon, right?) and then get priority access to the server.

dstillman

There's no such thing as a sync queue position—sync queue ordering is more complicated than FIFO. As I've said before, any position estimate would have the potential to be extremely inexact. We're far more concerned with speeding up syncs so that they're never queued for more than a few minutes.

Zotero servers run on Amazon, right?

Currently, no—Zotero File Storage uses Amazon S3 for storage, but everything runs on our own dedicated servers. (If it had simply been a matter of buying more capacity, we would have done so a long time ago.) But we've spent the last few months rearchitecturing the server code, and within the next few weeks almost everything will be running on Amazon, at which point we hope to be able to eliminate most sync delays.

erickb

After the rearchitecture, what should a "typical" wait time be? When should I decide it's a problem? (currently at 2 hours since I restarted Firefox).

Also, I can't tell if my last sync 3 hours ago was complete. When it started to exchange files, I left my computer, but when I returned the arrow was still spinning. Normally it doesn't do that, because I'm set to sync manually.

Thanks,
Eric

erickb

It has now been five hours... But I already restarted Firefox. So I am now reporting this as a possible problem.

Eric

dstillman

You have nothing queued right now and successful syncs as of earlier today.

For starters, be sure you've upgraded to 2.1.

erickb

Thanks. I had to shut my computer down to go home, but I think from what you write that actually my syncs must have been completed.

I'm now upgraded to 2.1. FYI, I've been checking regularly for updates via Firefox and from my 2.0.9 installation it didn't find the update. But I upgraded manually.

Eric

dstillman

We haven't pushed 2.1 to Firefox 3.6 users yet, only Firefox 4 users.