Linux: Zotero wont start

Hansbusch

Hey,

I tried to install zotero standalone on my new Linux Mint 17.2 x64 Laptop. First I tried to download the file from website but got an error on startup, so I decided to add the PPA and add Zotero from there. Still same error on Startup: "Your Zotero Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inacessible."
I also tried this command: rm -rf ~/.cache/zotero
No effect.
Any ideas? I installed it on another Mint PC 2 weeks ago, there its perfectly OK.

Thank you.

adamsmith

Try running Zotero with real time debug and see if you can make out which operation more specifically fails:
https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_problems#reporting_startup_errors

My guess would be this is the same underlying issue as in the thread you got the rm -rf command from, i.e. missing permissions on a directory Zotero needs to write to.

Hansbusch

Here you go:

(process:3213): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

(zotero:3213): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::sm-connect after class was initialised

(zotero:3213): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::show-crash-dialog after class was initialised

(zotero:3213): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::display after class was initialised

(zotero:3213): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::default-icon after class was initialised
Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory.

==============================

Well you are right, with sudo I can start it. So I guess, the problem might be the encryption of the home-folder? This is the only thing that differs from the desktop Linux I guess. Is there a workaround for this?

Thank you.

noksagt

It isn't likely an encryption issue, but rather one of user access controls. It is likely that files in ~/.zotero and/or ~/.cache/zotero are owned by root or another user and that you therefore don't have permission to access them. If there are files owned by root, you'd likely see them if you ran:sudo find /home/YOURUSER -uid 0|grep zoteroIf that shows some files, you would need to fix ownership/permissions of the relevant files/directories:
sudo chown -R YOURUSER:YOURUSER ~/.zotero ~/.cache/zotero
After this, avoid running zotero as root.

Hansbusch

Thank you very much, that solved my problem!