Debug ID D1237602461

jano_riha

Good evening,

This is to inform on the submitted debug output log, ID D1237602461, and to provide additional explanation.

I have experienced heavy lags when attaching a link to file. It usually exceeded 20 seconds (and I was not able to do anything in the meantime, as Firefox was "not responding", but fortunately it did not crash).

Actually, similar lags (meaning 20-30 seconds of waiting and Firefox "not responding") I have experienced also when attaching a stored copy of file, either by drag and drop, or via menu. I assumed that kind of lag might have been caused by the copying process. However, I am not sure about it anymore, as in the case of attaching a link, there is no copying process and still there is a lag. Of course, these two problems do not have to be related. I have mentioned this potential coincidence only in case they were.

Thank you very much for all the work. I very much appreciate there is such a programme as Zotero.

Best regards
Jano Riha

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Zotero 2.1.8, Firefox 5.O, Windows XP SP2

adamsmith

just to get an idea, how large is your library? (see the third bullet point here
http://www.zotero.org/support/tips_and_tricks )

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

Thank you for such a prompt reaction. There are 2300 items in my library, or 5832 including all the attachments. At the moment. In fact, I am still building it up. Is there a limit I cannot exceed?

JR

adamsmith

no limit, no - huge libraries are sometimes slow(er), but yours isn't terribly large.

jano_riha

All right,

good to hear, I have tried it again, and got this error message:

[JavaScript Error: "attachment.serialize is not a function" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/data/item.js" line: 4356}]

Zotero asked me to restart.

JR

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

it seems to me I have managed to trace the roots of the problem. I have played with Firefox extensions a bit, and quite probably BrowserProtect (1.1.3) and/or FoxFilter (7.6.3) somehow collided with Zotero. I have disabled them, and also NoScript (2.1.2.4rc5), just in case (although I set exceptions for Zotero in NoScript options, but perhaps there is something I do not know about). However, I have encountered another problem, even worse. I will refer to it in a new thread.

Regards
JR

P.S.: If anybody has experienced difficulties with the extensions I mentioned here, I would be grateful for their comments. I would like to find a way to use NoScript along with Zotero, at least. Thanks.

adamsmith

I know that people are using noscript without problems with Zotero, but conditions might be more specific. Have you tried disabling the two others and keeping NoScript enabled? Does that fix the performance issues?

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

Thanks again for you interest. I am grateful you are willing and able to communicate almost instantly. I have disabled NoScript as well, as I had a feeling it might have caused slowdowns (I had tried the possibility you suggested already before you wrote). I will try to enable it again sometime in the future and test it more properly, but now I need Zotero working without any complication, so I decided to disable any extension turning out as suspicious. I have already spent too much time solving lags and unresponding Firefox. I will let you know as soon as I learn anything new.

Regards
JR

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

It seems the problem is still here and might not have been caused by FF extensions, in the end. The heavy lags and unresponding FF after adding a new link to file, or a new stored file, have not disappeared.

In order to solve this, I tried to disable all the FF extensions, first except the Java Console and the extensions related to Zotero. Till yesterday, I used only Zotero itself and Word and Open Office Integration, so I guess the other Zotero related extensions (ZotFile, Locale Switcher, SEASR Analytics), cannot be blamed for the problem. The result: a lag and unresponding FF over 60 seconds (see debug ID D48691239).

Next I tried to disable all the extension except Zotero itself (which, of course, cannot be disabled in case one still wishes to use it). The result: a lag over 20 seconds. A bit better, but still not good enough for me (see debug ID D577295889).

I hope there is a solution somewhere, because otherwise I will have to consider changing the programme (which is a pain, because there is no such thing as Zotero). It is too time-consuming to wait for 20-30 seconds or more every time you add a new link or file (imagine that when you add for instance 10 books and 10 articles, you have to wait for 3-5 minutes or more, and of course, I need to add much more than that).

Thank you very much for taking notice of this report.

Regards
JR

adamsmith

Devs will have to look at the debug reports, until then I'd suggest to see if turning of indexing of attachments helps (set the characters to index in the search tab of the Zotero preferences to 0). You'll lose full text search, which is unfortunate...

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

Many thanks for your reply. Would it be possible to set the preferences as you suggest only for adding everything I need to add and then change them back to enable the full text search again? Or disabling the indexing of attachments means I will never be able to search them? Please, accept my apology if you consider this question stupid.

JR

adamsmith

I guess you could raise the index number again and re-index everything - that would take a long time, but you could do it over night. I have never tried that, so no guarantees, but I don't see why that shouldn't work.

jano_riha

Dear Adam,

I did what you had advised and it is much better now, usually I have to wait only for 3-5 seconds, which is acceptable. I hope I will be able to use indexing in the future again (in the meantime, I will try to reindex during night as you suggest, and will let you know about the results).

Thanks again!
JR