Inability to update and server hang error on Linux solved via granting write permissions to /opt

Hello all,

I am posting this as a solution to a Zotero problem I had and have since solved in case it might help someone. No help is needed by me, however, if you're having this problem and this solution doesn't work, please post here. This occurred on Debian Linux 6.0.6 (squeeze), but probably applies to Ubuntu and GNU/Linux systems in general. I am using Zotero Standalone.

I had been having trouble upgrading my Zotero install for some time. Initially, I was unable to upgrade due to a never-ending "Connecting to the update server..." message. I had thought that there was a server connectivity issue, however, checking for updates via "Help | Check for Updates..." rather than via the automatic dialog led to the error, "The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Zotero running on your computer, and then restart Zotero to try again."

This led to this forum post - http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/21759/update-failure-on-ubuntu-1110/ - and the idea that the problem was due to not having write access caused the problem. However, while granting write permissions to /opt and /opt/zotero was enough to download the update, it was not enough to install the update, and I had the error "The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Zotero running on your computer, and then restart Zotero to try again." My install is in /opt, simply using

# chmod -R o+w /opt/zotero /opt

finally solved the problem. After installing, I undid the procedure to return to the previous state with

# chmod -R o-w /opt/zotero /opt

and everything worked perfectly.
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