Zotero FF add-on won’t start—“Database upgrade error”

macho

Hi there. My Firefox Zotero add-on suddenly won’t open. When I hit Ctrl+Alt+Z a popup window says “Database upgrade error.” In the Error Console I get:

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at ws://nik.io/api/nikio.json/subscribe?X-Atmosphere-tracking-id=e03e8f39-a9c1-9f30-de23-dd6b8f649c78&X-Atmosphere-Framework=0.8&X-Atmosphere-Transport=websocket&X-Cache-Date=1337357438902&Content-Type=undefined.
Source File: http://nik.io/v1/nikio.js Line: 2448

I think it coincided with an upgrade I did of Ubuntu packages which included Firefox 12.0 (FF for Ubuntu canonical 1.0). I am using Zotero 3.0.7 and just tried reinstalling it, as a similar thread recommended, with no effect.

Any thoughts or advice?

adamsmith

http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs#reporting_startup_errors

macho

Thank you. I’ve now followed the instructions above and am still getting the same problem, with no “chrome://zotero…” lines in the Error Console. In purging the specified files from my Firefox profile, I only deleted extensions.ini and extensions.sqlite, because the others mentioned in the instructions didn’t exist.

dstillman

Restart your computer and try again. Those instructions should work, and we can't help you without an error. The above one has nothing to do with Zotero.

dstillman

It shouldn't actually be possible to get the "Database upgrade error" message without an error in the console. Make sure those prefs are set correctly. (I'm not sure if it's still relevant, but check the showInConsole one too.)

macho

Hmm... well, it does seem to be happening to me, unless I’m doing something wrong.

Both devtools.errorconsole.enabled and javascript.options.showInConsole are set to true.

dstillman

Disable your other extensions. Errors from other extensions can push Zotero's errors out of the log.

dstillman

If that fails, you can also try generating real-time debug output, which might include an error.

macho

Perfect—thank you Dan. Disabling extensions didn’t work, but real-time debugging got me this in the terminal:

zotero(5): DELETE FROM itemTypesCombined

zotero(3): [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80630002
(NS_ERROR_STORAGE_IOERR) [mozIStorageConnection.executeSimpleSQL]"
nsresult: "0x80630002 (NS_ERROR_STORAGE_IOERR)" location: "JS frame
:: chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/db.js :: <TOP_LEVEL> :: line 149"
data: no] [QUERY: DELETE FROM itemTypesCombined] [ERROR: disk I/O
error]

zotero(5): Rolling back transaction
And to be honest, I have been getting the odd disk I/O error here and there over the past couple of months (since my laptop fell off the kitchen table—oops).

Any thoughts of how I might be able to salvage whatever parts of my database might be readable? If not, I might have a backup of an earlier uncorrupted zotero db, what do I do to restore it?

dstillman

Ah, OK, that would do it.

I'd start by making a full backup of your Zotero data directory (and, really, your entire hard drive, which might be on the wane). Then check your whole disk for errors—if there are just filesystem errors, they might be able to be repaired, but the hardware might also be failing. If the drive itself is OK and only part of the Zotero database file is corrupt, you could try uploading it to the DB Repair Tool, though depending on the extent of corruption that might not help.

macho

Ok, thanks again. It seems like the DB Repair Tool isn't going to do it for me, but I think I have a relatively recent backup around here somewhere...