speed sync/enforce sync

migugg

since sync speed is still not immediate, and I have often (as now) the problem that I want to leave office and continue work at home, or in this case: I leave for two weeks. I think it could make sense to have somewhere a (hidden) button that enforces sync (and jump ahead of the sync queue and allow more bandwidth for the sync). Since most of the time I do not need this, I would assume that it should not cause too much congestion, because at any one moment maybe one in 1000 people use it and I would ease working with zotero tremendously.
This would also allow people not to be concerned with very slow syncs, if they know that if they need it, they can have a faster one.

dstillman

According to the server logs, all of your syncs today took under a minute.

dstillman

Well, the possible exception to this is if one of your group libraries was locked for writing by another user, which wouldn't show in our logs. But in that case, there's no way to "jump ahead of the sync queue" or upload your data to the server ahead of time, because the changes by the other user could modify the library.

You can see some sync status by hovering over sync icon while it's spinning.

But with the exception of an issue a couple days ago, the sync queues have been very short—with no more than a handful of people queued at a time—this entire week.

One other thing we might be able to do at some point is sync individual libraries separately, so that, say, your personal library could sync even if one of your group libraries was locked by another user.

migugg

Possibly the latter case was happening, because my group library did not sync. I left after waiting for about 45 minutes. While it said, "waiting for updated data from server , last sync 3 hours ago". I did not even know that a group library can be locked (and how can I know whether it is locked? ). it would really help to have a mechanism for making group and individual library independent. Or at least there should be an indicator who is locking the library, so I can call this person and ask her to stop editing, so that I can sync my library. I cannot call 10 people to find out who is locking my library when I want to leave my office.
I currently work with 4 different groups in parallel for four different projects/articles, and it is extremely likely that at any given moment in time one person of those groups is editing sth.

dstillman

Well, first, syncs are currently all or nothing across all libraries, so there's not such thing as a particular group not syncing. Nobody is actively "locking" the library in the way you imply, though, so certainly you don't need to pick up the phone. But the way sync works at the moment, if someone in one of your groups is doing a large upload to a library, it will lock syncing for anyone in that group.

There's no way to tell you the exact reason you were queued without looking into it while the sync is ongoing, but, for what it's worth, in the new architecture the vast majority of syncs should be instantaneous, and most longer ones shouldn't be longer than a few minutes.

In any case, we'll try to implement per-library syncing in a future version.

migugg

ok, thanks, but nobody did a large upload to the library, so i really don't know what happened.But thanks for clarification.