Choosing Zotero Preferences makes Firefox freeze

Androcles

When I call the Preferences menu through the Actions wheel of the main Zotero window or through Tools/Add-ons/Zotero/Preferences, Firefox freezes completely. There is no way to change Preferences. When I do not try to call Zotero's Preferences all other functions of Zotero and Firefox and other add-ons work well and I can also use Zotero with OpenOfiice).
I work with Firefox 3.0.5, Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview 3.6, Ubuntu 8.10. This set had been working fine and I could easily change Zotero's setup.
I have tried to solve the problem by disabling and uninstalling the other add-ons, changing and deleting the Firefox profile, and uninstalling and re-installing Firefox. To no avail. The problem persists.
Could you please help me solve this problem? Thanks a lot.

Androcles

I have noticed that the problem happens specially when I use Ubuntu's Compiz. But the problem also happens when I use Metacity. In this latter case, when I choose the Preferences menu, Zotero pops up a window asking for the password, but the window is empty and apparently there is no way to type the password. However, if I type the password blindly, the preferences window appear and I can work normally.
I have previously had no problem working with the same Zotero and Compis or Metacity; it looks like some setting would have been changed to Zotero itself and not to my settings. Am I overlooking something?
Could somebody help me with this annoying and time wasting problem, please?

fbennett

I am using nearly the same system configuration (3.0.5, Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview 3.6 @ r4003, Ubuntu 8.04), and the preferences menu works fine here. This sounds like a problem with your file permissions under ~/.mozilla/firefox (could be a failing hard drive as well, but you don't want to draw that conclusion too early.)

It's easy to check this out. Run the following commands in a terminal window, while logged in with the username you use to run Zotero:

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox
find -printf "%u\n" | grep -v NAME

Where NAME is your login name for that computer. This will print the username of any file in your Firefox profiles that is not owned by you. If it shows any output or throws an error, that's the source of the problem. (I also run Compiz as my window manager, so that's not a primary cause of the error.)

Androcles

f. bennett,
many thanks for your answer.
Unfortunately, the problem persists.
Following your advice, I ran these 2 commands:
1) cd /home/andres/.mozilla/firefox
This resulted in
andres@andres-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox$
2) find -printf "%u\n" | grep -v andres
where andres is my Ubuntu login name (while my login name in Zotero sync is Androcles, same as in Zotero forums, so as required).
This resulted in nothing: no print, no output, no error; the pointer simply went back to the firefox directory introduced with cd command:
andres@andres-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox$
I have come to think that this has something to do with Ubuntu's window manager, because the popup menu I must fill in with the password for Firefox when I call Zotero Preferences, that popup menu is there, hidden, waiting for the password to be typed. Then, if I type the password (or any letter) even without seeing any popup window, the popup menu suddenly appears filled with the text I have typed.
Should I have to reinstall Compiz and Metacity? In this eventuality, I hope this would be not so much complicated.
Many thanks again. I will keep trying to solve the problem and welcome any further help.

fbennett

It certainly does seem odd. It might be worth pulling out an Ubuntu install CD and running diagnostics (e2fsck) on each of your mountable disk partitions. One of your configuration files might have gotten cross-linked. It's just a guess, but the behaviour you describe is not normal.