Fail to open after partial import of LibraryThing MARC export

ConradErway

I exported a 220 book listing from LibraryThing in MARC format and then tried to import it into Zotero 2.1.8. It froze up so I restarted Firefox 5.0. Zotero will no longer open.

Any help appreciated.

adamsmith

http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs
more details would be helpful...

ConradErway

Not sure what details you are looking for but here are a few more. The import process started but then seemed to freeze. I closed Firefox after about 20 minutes or so and then restarted it. When I click on the Zotero button in the status bar I got the message that Zotero failled to open. Now I get the message "The Zotero database cannot be opened. Make sure you have read and write permissions for all files in the Zotero data directory." This is on a Windows XP sp3 machine.

The Zotero debug test is as follows
(3)(+0000000): Using data directory E:\My Documents\My Library\Zotero

(3)(+0000001): Opening database 'zotero'

(3)(+0057544): Getting Zotero sync password

(3)(+0006276): Opening database 'zotero'

(3)(+0000460): Cached 16 styles in 39 ms

(3)(+0000001): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2010, month:0, day:27})

(3)(+0000001): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2010, month:6, day:26})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2010, month:6, day:26})

(3)(+0000001): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2010, month:2, day:15})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2009, month:11, day:4})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: could not apply algorithms

(3)(+0000002): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2010, month:7, day:25})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2009, month:11, day:15})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2008, month:4, day:13})

(3)(+0000001): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2009, month:10, day:10})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2009, month:8, day:13})

(3)(+0000000): DATE: retrieved with algorithms: ({year:2008, month:8, day:16})


Again any help in getting Zotero up and running again would be appriceated. I do not necessarily need the LibraryThing import.

adamsmith

ok - do make sure you have those r&w privileges.
Make a back-up of you Zotero folder.
Then try if restoring from an automatic back-up will do:
http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#restoring_from_the_last_automatic_backup

ConradErway

Solved:

I tried the solution suggested by the link above. Unfortunately, I could not rename, move nor delete zotero.squlite because I was told it was a corrupt file. So I renamed the entire Zotero library folder to Zotero-old and copied everything else to a newly created Zotero folder. Then I renamed zotero.squlite.bak to zotero.squlite and tried restarting Firefox only to be told that the zotero file was corrupted. I deleted the newly created files and renamed zotero.squlite.bak.1 which was created yesterday to zotero.squlite and restarted Firefox again.

All is well now.

So was it my killing Firefox before the import from Librarything was finished or was it the very idea of the import itself that did zotero in?

Thanks for the suggestion above. It proved to be the seed that got me thinking about a solution.

adamsmith

well - it shouldn't have been either - it shouldn't be that easy to corrupt the Zotero database - but my money would be on interrupting the process, i.e. force-quitting Firefox. Big imports can take some time, it would likely have finished eventually.
If you'd still like the imported data I'd do a regular back-up and then try again, letting the computer run overnight - if it's still not finished then sth. is wrong with the import.