Constant sync conflicts even after resetting to Zotero server

wonblee

Due to a hard disk crash, I had to replace the HDD in my laptop and recover to the last back-up of about a couple of weeks ago. After the recovery routine, Zotery sync kept saying that this folder or that folder was read-only, preventing syncing.

The file xxxxx cannot be deleted. Check that the file is not currently in use and that it is not marked as read-only. To check all files in you Zotero data directory, right-click on the 'zotero' directory, click Properties, clear the Read-only checkbox, and apply the change to all folders and files in the directory.

I have no idea why those local storage folders went read-only after recovery. Anyways, realizing that it was not just a handful of subfolders under storage that have become read-only, I decided to do a clean resetting to Zotero server. I did and even got the message that the local storage was successfully cleared and the server storage downloaded.

But, even after this seemingly clean resetting to the Zotero server, Zotero keeps popping up the "conflict resolution" pane. This doesn't make any sense. I just erased all local data and downloaded the server data. How can there be any conflict between the local file and the remote file?

Is there any way out of this, short of uninstalling and reinstalling Zotero altogether? BTW, I on MLZ.

wonblee

Now I'm getting the following error in my desktop too. Big trouble...

The file xxxxx cannot be deleted. Check that the file is not currently in use and that it is not marked as read-only. To check all files in you Zotero data directory, right-click on the 'zotero' directory, click Properties, clear the Read-only checkbox, and apply the change to all folders and files in the directory.

dstillman

I decided to do a clean resetting to Zotero server. I did and even got the message that the local storage was successfully cleared and the server storage downloaded.

Do you mean Restore from Zotero Server? That's the one that deletes your local data and replaces it with server data.

Anyway, Restore from Zotero Server doesn't touch the 'storage' directory, which is what the above message refers to. If you're sure you have all your files on the Zotero server, you can manually delete the 'storage' folder within your Zotero data directory. But really you should just fix the permissions in the data directory—it and all files underneath need to be owned and writable by your current user account. As far as I know you can set all that recursively.