Zotero plugin preventing Firefox from opening or quitting on mac

rebelprincenyc
My zotero Firefox plugin is preventing firefox from opening AND quitting on Mac.

I have disabled all plugins except Zotero. When I start firefox, it bounces in the dock but a window never opens. It shows up as not responding in task manager. If I force quit firefox, it acts as though it has quit: it disappears from task manager. However, if I try to open firefox in safe mode, an error message tells me that a copy of Firefox is already open. Similarly,if I try to shut down my computer, Firefox appears as open and prevents it from shutting down. Attempting to force quit in the "force quit applications" menu accessed from the menubar does nothing. I have to do a hard shutdown (holding down the power button until the computer turns off) in order to restart.

This behavior does not occur if the Zotero plugin is disabled.

I am on the latest Zotero and Firefox (43.0.4) versions.

Mac OSX El Capitan 10.11.2
  • dstillman
    Is your Zotero data directory in its usual location on a local drive, or is it in Dropbox, on a network share, etc.?

    If you can generate real-time debug output for startup through the hang, that might be instructive.
  • rebelprincenyc
    Hi Dan,

    Thanks for your help. My data directory is on an SD card on my laptop. I have no trouble navigating to the directory in finder.

    Here is the debug output:

    zotero(3)(+0000000): Using data directory /Volumes/X/zotero/zotero

    zotero(3)(+0000001): IPC: Initializing pipe at /Volumes/X/zotero/zotero/pipes/1453342034851

    zotero(3)(+0000002): Loading in full mode

    zotero(3)(+0000002): Opening database 'zotero'
  • rebelprincenyc
    If I take out the SD card, firefox will open and zotero says that it cannot open the data directory. I wonder if the SD card might be corrupt. what is the safest way to move the directory back to my hard drive?
  • dstillman
    Oh, yeah, all bets are off with something like that. Could be the speed of the card for this sort of access pattern, could be something to do with the filesystem on the card and the locking that SQLite requires...
    what is the safest way to move the directory back to my hard drive?
    Option A here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/transferring_a_library
  • rebelprincenyc
    Thanks. Library is back on HD, SD card reserved for less critical purposes. I did use it for a year without issue, so who knows why it acted up now.
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