Upgrade StorageSnapshots appear as missing again and again after synchronizing
Hi,
I have an on-going problem which has been plaguing my Zotero library and group libraries for about a year. I have done several searches to see if others have similar issues, and sometimes it seems they do, but every solution I've tried hasn't solved the issue permanently. I use Zotero Standalone almost exclusively now. My library synchronizes through WebDAV, while the group libraries do through Zotero of course.
In my main library and in a group library I share with a student researcher, I have several items with snapshots (online newspaper articles, mostly). I had a feeling for a long time that the computer where the item was not originally added was showing the snapshot, but then losing it. The student researcher confirmed that items that I add are synchronized sometimes with the snapshot, and often without. It's hard to be sure however, because sometimes we remember seeing an item has a full blue dot (meaning the snapshot is there), and then discovering an empty dot later. If we click on the snapshot for one of these items, it is as if Zotero "looks for" the snapshot, and at times it will find it. The dot fills in, and a synchronization process is often set off. Other times we get the dreaded "the attached file could not be found" error. It isn't clear why Zotero, when the "look for" process is set off, sometimes locates and sometimes does not locate the snapshot.
This week I tried resetting File Sync History on both of my computers, and have been checking in on one subcollection (with 30 items) as a test. This subcollection is not in a group library. After two resets on both computers, this subcollection appeared as complete on both computers, i.e., with full blue dots next to each item. However, today, when I opened it, Zotero on one of the computers (Computer B) displayed empty blue dots next to 22 of the 30 items. I presume that this happened after further synchronizations. Computer A displays full blue dots next to all items, and checking a few of the snapshots shows them as actually there (sometimes this is not the case, where there is a blue dot, but then clicking the snapshot actually returns the dreaded error). Clicking on two snapshots with empty blue dots on Computer B led to Zotero "finding" the snapshots, i.e., filling in the blue dots, while the third one returned the dreaded error. I'm not sure how many more could be found, since each "look for" process can take several minutes of "synchronization" to complete. But it always seems to me that once the dreaded error comes back, Zotero will not "find" another snapshot in that period of searching for them. If I had to guess, I would say that the majority of the items in this subcollection were initially stored with Computer A. That is, the problem seems to be maintaining the snapshots in the "receiving" computer.
I haven't noticed this problem as much with other kinds of attachments, like stored PDFs, although I'm not always aware of the problem. I have recently started to suspect that some stored PDFs are also behaving this way.
This is obviously a very frustrating issue, and has already taken a lot of time to narrow down.
Thank you.
I have an on-going problem which has been plaguing my Zotero library and group libraries for about a year. I have done several searches to see if others have similar issues, and sometimes it seems they do, but every solution I've tried hasn't solved the issue permanently. I use Zotero Standalone almost exclusively now. My library synchronizes through WebDAV, while the group libraries do through Zotero of course.
In my main library and in a group library I share with a student researcher, I have several items with snapshots (online newspaper articles, mostly). I had a feeling for a long time that the computer where the item was not originally added was showing the snapshot, but then losing it. The student researcher confirmed that items that I add are synchronized sometimes with the snapshot, and often without. It's hard to be sure however, because sometimes we remember seeing an item has a full blue dot (meaning the snapshot is there), and then discovering an empty dot later. If we click on the snapshot for one of these items, it is as if Zotero "looks for" the snapshot, and at times it will find it. The dot fills in, and a synchronization process is often set off. Other times we get the dreaded "the attached file could not be found" error. It isn't clear why Zotero, when the "look for" process is set off, sometimes locates and sometimes does not locate the snapshot.
This week I tried resetting File Sync History on both of my computers, and have been checking in on one subcollection (with 30 items) as a test. This subcollection is not in a group library. After two resets on both computers, this subcollection appeared as complete on both computers, i.e., with full blue dots next to each item. However, today, when I opened it, Zotero on one of the computers (Computer B) displayed empty blue dots next to 22 of the 30 items. I presume that this happened after further synchronizations. Computer A displays full blue dots next to all items, and checking a few of the snapshots shows them as actually there (sometimes this is not the case, where there is a blue dot, but then clicking the snapshot actually returns the dreaded error). Clicking on two snapshots with empty blue dots on Computer B led to Zotero "finding" the snapshots, i.e., filling in the blue dots, while the third one returned the dreaded error. I'm not sure how many more could be found, since each "look for" process can take several minutes of "synchronization" to complete. But it always seems to me that once the dreaded error comes back, Zotero will not "find" another snapshot in that period of searching for them. If I had to guess, I would say that the majority of the items in this subcollection were initially stored with Computer A. That is, the problem seems to be maintaining the snapshots in the "receiving" computer.
I haven't noticed this problem as much with other kinds of attachments, like stored PDFs, although I'm not always aware of the problem. I have recently started to suspect that some stored PDFs are also behaving this way.
This is obviously a very frustrating issue, and has already taken a lot of time to narrow down.
Thank you.
And can you double-check the sync settings on Computer B to make sure that they're not set to "as needed"? I'm not aware of anyway Zotero would do something that looks like "searching" for an attachment with a full sync set up.
Is there anything else unusual about your setup that could be contributing to this? In particular, the idea that attachments would "vanish" after being there initially is extremeley odd and there's nothing Zotero does that would ever cause this. Two long-shot thoughts I have is 1) overzealous security software that quarantines snapshots silently (they often have javascript code embedded which can trigger generic algorithms) or 2) a network share that's behaving oddly with the synced files.
Thanks for your helpful reply! The test subcollection is mine only, so the attachments aren't available at Zotero. I did find some in the group library that were missing (below).
You were right that the setting on Computer B was "as needed" (not Computer A though). I corrected that and hit sync, but the missing attachments were not synchronized. Then I did a reset history, and after doing yet another long sync, the test subcollection showed 14 missing attachments (empty blue dot) on Computer B. I checked a few, and they are on Computer A. Should I once again reset history on Computer A, and then again on B, and see if the missing attachments get synchronized?
In light of your question, I also went to the group library I share with the student, and found on Computer B that 8 are showing a missing attachment (although I swear that not long ago, there were no clear dots--relying on memory, though). All of them were showing as complete on Computer A, i.e., as attachment in place (blue dot). Yet, in five cases, when I clicked on the snapshot on Computer A, I got the error message (file not found) and the blue dot was changed to empty. Those snapshots were also not online. I.e., they showed up as there in the record view, but when I clicked on them, I got a 404 error. In four cases, the items were added by the student. (I just realized that online, it is possible to see "Added By"--as an aside, why can't we get that column on Zotero Standalone?) In a fifth, I could not find the item itself online, although it was on both my computers (without attachment).
In two case of an attachment missing on Comp B, but present on Comp A, I had added the item (presumably on Comp A), and the item was not found online.
In one strange case, the item was added by the student, and the snapshot was not online, but the snapshot *was* available on Comp A!
There seem to be lots of attachments added by the student which are synchronized to both computers, and the attachment is online. (I say "seem to be" because unless you click on them, you can't be sure.) But, in short, except for one strange case, it is probable that the attachment never synchronized online. The only explanation I can think of for the strange case is that I initially added the item, but then it was re-added or the snapshot was re-added by the student (she went through fixing a number of missing attachments at some point).
I should be clear: I'm not sure that the attachments are vanishing (I can't be sure though). Rather, I suspect that they don't actually synchronize, but they show up as if they synchronized (full blue dot). Then, maybe after another synchronization, Zotero re-marks them as not synchronized (empty blue dot). And then they don't synchronize afterwards. Clicking on them can set off a Zotero synchronize process, when this happens, the blue dot icon changes into a circle which slowly fills. Sometimes the attachment synchronizes successfully (back to blue dot), while other times not ("the attached file could not be found" error).
That is, the issue is that Zotero is somehow marking the attachments as synchronized without actually synchronizing them to server. Then, Zotero might even mark them as synchronized to another computer, even though they did not.
Thanks for explaining the "Added By" column. Looking forward.
Both the student and I have tried resetting sync history several times on all our computers, and there seem to be a set of attachments that continue to unsynchronized. In addition, on both the student's computer, and my Computer A, the full blue dot was returned, even though the attachment was not actually synchronized. (Clicking on the attachment makes Zotero return the empty blue dot.) In every case, as far as we can determine, the attachment is not being synchronized to the Zotero storage.
The two issues remain: first, that there are attachments that are stubbornly not synchronized, and second, that Zotero is marking them as synchronized even though they are not.
Thanks.