Endless syncing

Guillaume Larocque
Hi, we have a group library that several colleagues contribute to. One of our employee added a large number of references to the library a few weeks ago. On his computer, the syncing arrow has ket rotating endlessly for almost a month now and several entries from his computer haven't been updated on the online library and on our computers. He does not get an error message on his computer however.

Any help would be appreciated.
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  • dstillman
    We would have to know the user in question.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    The user is Hari6187 and the group library is QCBS.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    Do you need more information?
  • dcampbellmtaca
    Basically the same problem as Guillaume; a library imported from Endnote Web 12 days ago; Zotero has not yet succeeded in syncing.
  • dstillman
    edited May 25, 2011
    dcampbellmtaca: Start a new thread and say what the exact problem is.

    Guillaume: Hari6187 has nothing queued right now. I see repeated full download attempts from a week ago. Make sure the person is using Firefox 4 and isn't killing Firefox if it freezes briefly after the download finishes.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    I can confirm that he is using Firefox 4 on Windows. He has updated hundreds of references in his library, and his syncing icon has been spinning literally for over one month now. He is not killing Firefox and his browser window remains open all day. He has restarted Firefox several times.
  • dstillman
    Well, the server shows him downloading his entire library three times in the last hour. What happened on his end?
  • Guillaume Larocque
    He simply opened Firefox. That is all. He wants to upload (not download) all the new references he added to his Zotero library. His Firefox hangs and then the sync icon spins continuously, and then it hangs again. Zotero is pretty much using all the resources on his computer.
  • dstillman
    His Firefox hangs and then the sync icon spins continuously, and then it hangs again.
    And you're sure he doesn't force-restart Firefox when it hangs? That's what it will do when it processes a large about of downloaded data. Generally Zotero shouldn't retry a failed sync automatically without user interaction, but I see three downloads within a 15-minute span about 20 minutes ago.

    If not, we'll need a Report ID.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    >> That's what it will do when it processes a large about of downloaded data.

    So Zotero can't handle a large amount of data?? We did restart Firefox about 20 minutes ago because it had been frozen for several (read a lot of) minutes. Now it was restarted and it is still frozen. The bottomline is that the files on his computer are not getting synced with the files on the server. We need the files on his computer to be uploaded to the server.
  • dstillman
    This is why I asked you—twice—if you were force-restarting Firefox.

    Zotero is processing a very large download of many items, which currently will freeze Firefox. (In a future version we'll likely be able to fix this, but it's this way due to technical limitations in earlier versions of Firefox, and it'll take some major work to address.) Don't interrupt it if you want the sync to go through. Otherwise it'll just happen again.

    He can't upload data from his computer until he downloads the data from the server.

    But I now see a(n extremely large) queued upload from him on the server, so it seems the download may have gone through.
  • dstillman
    But it shouldn't be frozen at all now, since it's queued on the server.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    We killed Firefox for the first time 30 minutes ago. Before that, he was leaving FF on all the time, and over the last month, the syncing still hasn't gone through. How long can it take to upload a queue of a size similar to what he has right now? Can it really be of the order of weeks??
  • Guillaume Larocque
    You are right, it is no longer frozen now.
  • dstillman
    No. But there are a few cases currently where the sync icon can continue to spin erroneously even if nothing is happening, which is why if it's spinning for more than a few hours it's generally a good idea to restart Firefox.

    And it doesn't have anything to do with the upload until the download goes through, which it now seems to have done, since it's trying to upload.

    In any case, now he just needs to wait for the upload to go through on the server, which, given its size, will probably take about an hour.
  • dstillman
    And note that subsequent syncs should be instantaneous. This is only an issue when syncing a very large amount of data up or down.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    He is on a laptop. Is it possible that there are issues when he closes the lid and the computer goes to sleep mode in the middle of a sync?
  • dstillman
    Yes.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    What will be the likely effects of that? Will it completely restart the download/upload process?
  • dstillman
    Let's just see if his upload goes through.
  • dstillman
    The upload finished successfully.
  • hari6187
    Hello,

    We are facing the same problem again (user - hari6187, group library - QCBS). The syncing arrow has been rotating for five days now. I have not shut down the computer nor have I restarted/killed my browser(firefox 4) since then. Could you please help us here?
  • dstillman
    Restart Firefox, and make sure you're running Zotero 2.1.8.
  • hari6187
    I restarted firefox yesterday and it's been more than 24 hours now. The sync icon is still rotating. And yes, I am using zotero 2.1.8.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    Still no syncing has occurred on this computer. This is getting to be a REAL problem for us. Any idea what could be causing this??
  • dstillman
    hari6187 has a queued full download from 75 minutes ago with over 72,000 items. That's an extremely large sync that's timing out on the server. (Zotero generally shouldn't do a full sync on its own, but it can happen in a few rare cases, and it will also happen if you perform a reset operation, which you should almost never do.)

    We can try to fix the timing out, but if hari6187 doesn't have any local changes in the group, they can leave the group temporarily, sync just the personal library, and then rejoin and sync the group items.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    We closed Firefox 75 minutes ago and restarted it since the sync icon had been spinning for several days with no result. This is on a fresh install of Zotero on a different computer than the one mentioned in the thread above. The library has never been loaded on that computer, so it needs to do a full sync for that reason. Our entire library probably contains less than 3,000 items (if each reference is one item). It certainly doesn't contain 72,000 references.
  • dstillman
    Your group library has nearly 38,000 items, including child items.

    But I'm seeing if I can get your download to go through on the server.
  • dstillman
    OK, it will take more work to get this going on the server—you're easily in the very upper end of total data size—but if this is a fresh install, you can skip the massive sync by just transferring the Zotero data directory via a flash drive or external hard drive from another computer that already has hari6187's library on it. Zotero will then just sync using the last sync time on that computer instead of pulling down two very large libraries.

    I actually wouldn't have hari6187 leave the group temporarily as I suggested above, since if there are multiple computers involved it's possible that could cause additional problems.
  • Guillaume Larocque
    Ok, we might try to do that tomorrow. By 38,000 items, do you mean 38,000 individual references? (one article/book reference=1 item). If yes, my library is properly synced at the moment and I just exported it to jabref... it contains 1,678 references.
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