[Juris-M] Missing files/folders on upgrade

grimmelm · August 27, 2016

I had been receiving error messages that Juris-M couldn't check for updates, so I went to the Github page to get the latest version. I clicked on the OS X installer, downloaded it, opened it, copied Juris-M to my application folder, and launched it. When I did, my library was missing most of my documents and most of my subfolders.

At first I thought, oh, it loaded the wrong profile. So I've checked the profiles in my Application Support/Zotero directory. There are a couple (I'd made a couple of backups), but nothing with any files more recent than a year ago.

Any suggestions for other places to look or things to try? Any way to back out from the current version and recover what the old version saw?

dstillman · August 27, 2016

Juris-M isn't a Zotero project, so you'll need to report this to fbennett, the developer.

https://juris-m.github.io/support/

(I've also modified the thread title, in case Frank is passing by.)

fbennett · August 29, 2016

James,

Sorry for the delay in responding. A Juris-M install can't reset the library to an earlier version. It is most likely that the system was set to use a custom Juris-M/Zotero directory location, and the client forgot the setting on the reinstall.

Try searching for the filename "jurism.sqlite" in the Finder.

grimmelm · August 30, 2016

Thanks, Frankk. I found the jurism.sqlite that jurism is currently using, and I found the jurism.sqlite in the backup of the whole library I made last year. It's a mystery where the documents I added in the interim wound up.

I'm actually okay writing off the loss of this library. I pushed out a draft in the winter using Juris-M and I won't need to revisit it. I will see if I can recover the rest using my hard-drive backups. Even if not, I didn't lose much else of long-term importance.

I just want to be very very certain going forward that I don't accidentally do anything like this again. Obviously, step one is make a library backup before doing any kind of manual upgrade attempt. Are there any other best practices for safe library management?

fbennett · August 30, 2016

Regular backups is the main thing. Settle on a tool, test its restore capability, and make sure that it's catching all the necessaries.

The other thing to check would be the online copy, if the library was synced.