Translators missing

CC007

Yesterday I had an intermittent problem with translators being missing. Today, having rebooted etc, they are not present at all.

I have been through the steps at https://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues, so here are the actions required under step 11:

example page with no translator http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1411337 - NO PAGES ARE WORKING

Report ID 1053263880

I am using zotero for firefox latest version. Downloaded a couple of days ago onto new PC at the university. The university PC is running Firefox 30.0 ...

dstillman

Can you provide a Debug ID (different from a Report ID) for an attempt to load an Amazon product page?

CC007

This is the debug ID I ran yesterday with the same problem:

D1632642442

dstillman

(3)(+0000257): Translators: Looking for translators for http://www.worldcat.org/title/wealth-of-nations-books-i-iii/oclc/8424650&referer=brief_results

(3)(+0000000): Translate: All translator detect calls and RPC calls complete

(5)(+0000000): Translate: Running handler 0 for translators

(3)(+0000000): Translate: No translators found

Just to be sure, you did the Reset Translators step on the troubleshooting page?

If you're running any other Firefox extensions, try temporarily disabling them.

aurimas

Just one note: if you do reset translators, make sure not to close Firefox/Standalone immediately after. If you do, translators get deleted, but don't have enough time to get restored. Wait a minute before restarting (we should fix this).

CC007

Yes - I have reset the translators and waited (ages) before restarting. I don't have any other extensions.

Perhaps the problem is something to do with the way firefox is set up at the university? It takes a very long time to load, and my library is struggling to sync (it takes a very long time, sometimes comes up with error message, then restarts all over again). Have you experienced this kind of problem through organisations where software may be installed differently to on a personal machine?

CC007

My IT dept created a fresh firefox profile for me because they thought there was a chance that it was corrupt. The translators showed up initially, but then disappeared after I restarted firefox.

dstillman

First, can you go into your Zotero data directory and look at the contents of the 'translators' directory? Do you see files in there, or is it empty?

Beyond that, this could be due to security software on your system. If you're running any, try temporarily disabling it and then resetting translators again and seeing if that helps.

dstillman

Perhaps the problem is something to do with the way firefox is set up at the university?

Do you know how it's set up? Is your Zotero data directory on a network share rather than the local hard drive?

pacard

I suddenly had the same problem, no translators at all in both FF and ZSA, but resetting translators and re-starting FF after that worked. I think this happened after updating to version 4.0.21.2 (I'm on Linux Xubuntu with FF 30.0).

CC007

The zotero data directory is on the local hard drive. I have decided to give up trying this way. A colleague has recommended that I use a portable version of chrome or firefox alongside standalone, so I am trying that. Unfortunately, I am now having problems syncing and accessing some references in my library, probably because I deleted the zotero library from when I was trying to use zotero for firefox. I thought it would automatically resync and install files on my computer, but I am getting the message "file not found, this may have been deleted or moved outside of zotero". How can I get a refresh on all my zotero files / library with files from the server? Do I need to open a new thread to sort this out? Apologies - one problem leads to another ...

CC007

standalone keeps trying to resync which is also slowing everything down

dstillman

You show perfectly normally looking sync activity on the server, so I'm not sure what you mean by "keeps trying to resync".

But at this point I don't really know what you mean, and I'd strongly recommend not trying to take drastic steps on your own here (like switching to a portable browser version, etc.) — we're not going to be able to help you if you do that.

Can you take a step back and tell us exactly what the current issue is, and how it relates to the original issue you reported in this thread?

CC007

The issue is that I can't get any translators on my university computer. My IT dept think it may be something to do with the set up of firefox, but they are not able to support with zotero issues.

I have tried to find other work arounds, e.g. using standalone with chrome or firefox which is what a colleague does, but for some reason, zotero is unable to find a large proportion of my files when I do this.

I have had help with trying to locate and point to the right files, but still can't access them from standalone. And am therefore completely stuck.

Have tried loading portable firefox, and this seemed to solve the problem, but now zotero will not accept my username and password to sync, even though I can log in fine on the zotero website.

When I said previously that I was having problems syncing, it was taking an hour to try to sync , then coming up with an error message to say it couldn't find files, then trying all over again to try to sync and slowing the machine down. Kept repeating the same thing but still with no access to the majority of files and no access to html links.

Any suggestions gratefully received, but I am at the end of my knowledge on this one. Plan to get my IT dept to delete everything zotero related from the system, and reinstall standalone once more to see whether I have any luck from a clean slate.

Is there any way for me to remove everything related to zotero from my system? I thought I had done this previously, but there was evidence after the reinstall that not everything had been removed. This is probably the most helpful info you can provide right now!

Thank you

CC007

Zotero is finally accepting my username and password on the portable version. But I am now getting the same error messages as on standalone - i.e. xxx file can not be updated, check the file is not in use, you have the correct permissions to allow write access, and it has a valid username ...

Unless you have a good suggestion soon, it's back to deleting everything and starting again in the hope I can do some work this week.

dstillman

Deleting anything isn't generally a particularly helpful thing to do. As I said above, the issue is almost certainly security software on your system interfering with Zotero. That would explain the translators being missing and with those permissions errors when trying to sync.

CC007

The thing is that my colleague isn't getting these problems. But actually he is not using the sync feature so this may be the answer. Looks like I won't be resubscribing, and will be back to coping libraries between computers.

I will need to delete existing material however, so that I don't have multiple locations for zotero files though I guess.

dstillman

The simple test is to temporarily disable security software to see if that fixes the problem. If you're getting those messages, something on your computer is interfering with Zotero's ability to write to the disk, and there's nothing Zotero can do about that.

dstillman

And again, this would explain the translators issue too, so this isn't just about syncing. But I think you still haven't answered my question about about the contents of the 'translators' directory within your Zotero data directory .

CC007

Well I'm going to try an alternative way avoiding syncing because the translators work fine on initial installation of firefox / zotero before the syncing starts.

I can't check the translators directory because I have now deleted all the old zotero files in the hope that I can do a clean install and try that.

dstillman

Translators don't have anything at all to do with syncing, so those things aren't related. Translators update on their own, and security software can interfere with that.

CC007

Thanks for all your help with this. There is obviously some quirk to the university systems. I have decided to get over the sync issues by not using the sync function. I can also get the translators when I install firefox direct from the web rather than using the uni's own programme installer - in case that helps anyone else out there.