Password change requires firefox (iceweasel) restart

cudBwrong

I changed my password from the website, no problems. I also changed it in zotero preferences, but the sync started to fail. When I restared firefox (actually, iceweasel) it worked.

Iceweasel 24.4.0

Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.54-2 i686 unknown GNU/Linux

Zotero 4.0.19 plugin

aurimas

Did you change webdav address password (oops)? If so, there are some details about the issue here: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/247

cudBwrong

This may be the same issue described in the link, except that in my case, the server initially fails to accept a good password, recently changed, instead of continuing to accept an old and now bad password, as described in the link above. When aurimas asks about the "webdav password," I'm not sure how to answer. I changed my password to my account on the zotero website, which is also what I use for syncing. I don't use an independent webdav service, although zotero's native service may also use the webdav protocol.

Trying on another browser, it also failed to sync after I updated the password in the zotero firefox plugin preferences. Several restarts failed to cure this, but it finally began to work for no apparent reason. Evidently the cache finally cleared itself.

So just to be clear, the sequence was, first I changed my password to my account on zotero.org. Then I changed my password in the plugin preferences to the same new password. Sync through the plugin failed repeatedly, sometimes after several restarts, and then began to work.

aurimas

Well, at least it's working now. Unfortunately, that also means that we can't do further troubleshooting.

cudBwrong

I can reproduce this. I just changed my password again on zotero.org. Curiously, I got a dialog asking me which account -- the username or my email address. I chose the username. I then changed the plugin preferences, which shows the username, to the new password. Now it fails to sync.

cudBwrong

Looking a little further, the problem may be triggered by the preferences password update, but it may be unrelated to the password. I tried deliberately entering an incorrect password in preferences, and for the first time I got a password error dialog. Looking at the log by clicking on "report error" when triggering the error when giving a correct password, I get the following:

[JavaScript Error: "[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE) [nsIIOService2.newChannelFromURI]" nsresult: "0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE)" location: "JS frame :: resource://app/modules/WindowsPreviewPerTab.jsm :: _imageFromURI :: line 77" data: no]" {file: "chrome://browser/content/tabbrowser.xml" line: 484}]

[JavaScript Error: "[object ErrorEvent]" {file: "resource://gre/modules/Promise.jsm" line: 770}]

Direct3D 9 DeviceManager Initialized Successfully.
Driver: igdumdx32.dll
Description: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
Version: 8.15.10.1867

[JavaScript Error: "Error for operation 'open' for C:\Users\[myusername]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\1qzqwy1q.default\zotero\storage\SEDDNXNK\con.html" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/storage.js" line: 1092}]

aurimas

WebDAV and Zotero server sync are related in this case, since both of them use basic authentication (Zotero appears to use basic auth when fetching file sync info from api.zotero.org. @Dan, does zotero.org file sync use WebDAV?) and in both cases the password appears to be aggressively cached. I can reproduce this as well, but restarting Firefox fixes this. Obviously this should be fixed for a smoother user experience.

dstillman

@Dan, does zotero.org file sync use WebDAV?

No.

I believe that there's a bug here, but it seems quite likely that simply restarting Firefox/Zotero would fix it.

We'll be switching to a different authentication scheme with API syncing (though WebDAV will obviously continue to use Basic Auth).

aurimas

Yes, there's a bug. I have a patch. Do you want me to submit a pull request?