Trouble installing Firefox extension of Zotero

Hi All,

I am having trouble install Zotero extension for Firefox. After downloading and installing the Zotero, Firefox has trouble restarting to finish the installation. I enabled the debug output for Zotero, but it is not providing a lot of information, from my view. Anyway, here is the debug output:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Beginning of output %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
qsc@mariana:~$ firefox -ZoteroDebug
zotero(3)(+0000000): Using data directory /home/qsc/.mozilla/firefox/we4qjtu9.default-1467706000136/zotero

zotero(3)(+0000001): IPC: Initializing pipe at /home/qsc/.mozilla/firefox/we4qjtu9.default-1467706000136/zotero/pipes/1467954966764

zotero(3)(+0000003): Loading in full mode

zotero(3)(+0000000): Opening database 'zotero'

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% End of output %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

And then, the command just hang there; no windows will appear, no matter how long one waits.

Here is a bit more information about my system: My operating system is OpenBSD 5.9. Firefox is of version 44.0.2, and I am trying to install the latest version of Zotero, 4.0.29.10. I am aware that my OS is not one of the most popular options. But, hey, the main advantage of adopting a web-browser based app is that it works wherever there is a web-browser, regardless of the underlying OS.

Best,
Qingshan
  • Thanks for your response!

    I followed the instructions contained in the link. It requires one to start the firefox first, and then turn on the Browser Console. But this is exactly my problem. The browser will not open at all, when Zotero is enabled. The browser will open only when Zotero is disabled, or in the safe-mode, which turns off all the extensions.
  • I doubt this is going to fix this problem (though you never know), but Firefox 44 is not a supported release anymore. You should either be running the latest ESR release, 45.x or, preferably, the latest regular release, 47.0.x
  • Thanks for the suggestion! I am on a system for which Mozilla does not care to provide a Firefox binary. If I want to run the latest version of Firefox, I would have to compile it from the source code, which I am not ready to do just yet.

    Incidentally, I was able to install the latest Zotero on a very old copy of Firefox (version 38) on a Mac. Hence, I doubt that the version of Firefox is playing a role here. But I might be wrong. Maybe there is something special about Ver 44 of Firefox.
  • I followed the instructions contained in the link. It requires one to start the firefox first, and then turn on the Browser Console.
    It doesn't — it requires you to start Firefox with a flag that opens the browser console automatically. From your debug output, Zotero starts to initialize, which means Firefox is at least somewhat open, so I'd be surprised if the browser console didn't open if you followed the steps.
  • Er, sorry, I guess the Firefox instructions do have you open the console manually. See the Standalone instructions — you want to pass the -jsconsole flag to Firefox to open the console.
  • Thanks for the response! Indeed, adding the -jsconsole flag did bring up a console. But after that, everything seems frozen. I even have trouble terminate the process. Here is a snapshot of the message in the console, in addition to the Zotero debug message.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ufoiibuzor218o8/IMG_0039.JPG?dl=0

    To my un-trained eyes, this message did not reveal much. So, I am still lost as to who to do next.

    Thanks for your help!
  • I also have been trying to run the Firefox Zotero plugin under OpenBSD, with similar results.

    I believe this issue is being caused by differences in the behaviour of the open() system call under OpenBSD versus Linux.

    Please see this thread on one of the OpenBSD mailing lists:

    http://marc.info/?t=139076951500003&r=1&w=2

    As a fix, I believe it should be possible to implement an OpenBSD-specific routine in the Zotero plugin, so as to supplement the OS-specific routines for Windows/Mac/Linux in the code.
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