Help - I seem stuck again

sdspieg

Have been trying to sync a bunch of PCs with a new group in shared storage, but they have been working for hours now, and they don't seem to get beyond the 'getting updated data from server'. Have waited for hours, restarted firefox, upgraded to the latest version, etc - but all to no avail. Any help would be appreciated.

adamsmith

is that regular Zotero or MLZ? Remember, devs need to know what version you're using.

sdspieg

No, it's regular Zotero now.

dstillman

You have a massive queued download for 70,000 items (including child items and across all your libraries), which is probably too big to process all at once on the server. We're in the process of overhauling the way sync works to allow people with so many items to sync (by not trying to do everything at once), but that work won't be done for a number of months. Assuming these are new computers, your best bet for now would be to copy your library from another computer that's more up to date. Zotero on the target computer will then pick up wherever the database left off.

sdspieg

Thanks Dan. And yes, we probably do use Zotero more intensely than most :). Also yes, (some of) these are new computers, so we will try copying things manually. But the main change now is just ONE collection that a colleague of mine added to his library, that I changed ownership of (to our institute's paid account), and to which I am also a user. Is there a way to just export that one collection to some format (rdf?) and import it into mine in such a way that I also get the downloaded pdfs? Or is that not reliable?

adamsmith

(exporting and importing a collection would work reliably including pdfs using Zotero.RDF, yes, but that wouldn't help with syncing - for the sync those items would be separate so this wouldn't help with the large sync & it would create duplicates).

dstillman

But the main change now is just ONE collection that a colleague of mine added to his library, that I changed ownership of (to our institute's paid account), and to which I am also a user.

In theory if it's not a new computer it shouldn't be a full download, and you should be able to just sync to get the new library, but there are a few situations that (currently) can trigger full syncs, which obviously in your case are very bad. So it depends which computer is triggering the full downloads that I saw. But you can try syncing the non-new computer now to see if it goes through. Post here when you do and I can check to see if it's a full download.

dstillman

But the main change now is just ONE collection that a colleague of mine added

And I assume you mean "group library" here, not "collection"?

sdspieg

Dan, on the PC I am trying to sync right now, it would be an incremental download. And yes, it is (mostly) a group library I'm trying to add - I don't know if you can 'see' these things, but it's called 'HCSS-Shared Value Creation'.

dstillman

OK, then it sounds like something triggered a full sync, and your best bet, assuming you have another up-to-date computer and don't have new data on this computer, is to transfer the data directory from that one to this one.

If those things aren't the case, we can look into other options.

(Situations like this are a large part of why we're overhauling the sync architecture.)