Sync problem

sdspieg

Can somebody please take a look here at error # 1866469993 - I appear to be unable to sync my libraries... I do have a very large collection, but it has worked ok until not so long ago. Now, the sync item just keeps spinning while nothing seems te be happening (I'm trying it on the standalone version right now.

dstillman

Is it spinning now? You have nothing queued on the server. I also don't see any sync attempts from you for the last couple months.

sdspieg

Dan, thanks for replying. I was gone for a few hours and have now returned. This was the first time trying to sync from the standalone - I usually work with the firefox version. But it stopped running and has a read exclamation point now with 'empty response from the server'. The new error report # is 1923091475, It also said something about an empty password; but I do have a password saved, and it is the right one.
Also - the actual syncing that has to happen is from my PC to the Zotero storage server, not the other way around

dstillman

Not totally sure what's going on here, but given the amount of data in your libraries, I'd recommend installing the 5.0 Beta, which has an entirely new sync architecture. 5.0 will be released very soon, so it can be considered pretty close to final, and it's specifically designed to help with cases like yours. You can revert to the main version once it's released.

The "Empty response from server" message could point to a network issue — e.g., from a proxy server or security software — but we can debug that in 5.0 if necessary.

(Make sure you have a backup of your Zotero data directory for good measure.)

sdspieg

Ok. Such a recommendation, coming from such an authority, is not something one easily ignores :). So I went ahead, backed up the data directory (all 44 GBs of it - took a few hours to copy it to another drive), installed the standalone version of Zotero 5 and am now waiting for the "data directory migration". Any idea of how long that might take? It has been going on for a few hours again...

dstillman

Hmm, that's not right — that part should be pretty close to instantaneous. (There's a database upgrade after that that might take a few minutes.)

5.0 tries to move your data directory from the previous default location inside your Firefox or Zotero profile directory to your home directory (e.g., C:\Users\username). Is there any reason those would be on separate physical disks on your system? If you look in C:\Users\:username:\Zotero, do you see Zotero files? Can you compare the old data directory to that one to see if it's actually still doing anything?

sdspieg

Well, I'm not sure what happened, but it did finish now. And I had to copy the folder to another physical drive in that same computer, because the drive that has my home directory was close to full. But so I guess the migration finished successfully - and it's syncing now ('downloading items in 'My Library'). I will report back when it either finished syncing and/or I get a message.

dstillman

because the drive that has my home directory was close to full

Does this mean that the profile directory and the home directory were on different drives (which would be very unusual)? Otherwise there shouldn't be any significant difference in free disk space before and after the upgrade, since it would just be moving the directory within the same disk (which is also why it should be instantaneous).

We definitely don't want upgrade to take hours, so it would be good to know what happened here.

sdspieg

It is still working, but I already see some new group library in there that I had created online, but that had not shown up yet. So it must be pushing stuff to me.
As to the folder - yes. I had a problem with an old boot drive not booting any more; so I put a new ssd drive in and made that the boot drive onto which I installed windows and my programs. But rather than copying everything over there (it's a ssd-drive, so smaller), I pointed Zotero to the old data directory.

sdspieg

Update: it's showing me conflict resolution dialogue boxes - so I guess it IS working.

dstillman

Meaning you had it set to a custom data directory location? It shouldn't have migrated the directory at all in that case. It should only migrate to the home directory when the data directory is in the Zotero or Firefox profile directory…

sdspieg

Ok - so when I look at the location in Firefox, it gives me: "The Zotero data directory could not be found. Previous directory: L:\Users\sdspi\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\wltvmd0e.default\zotero. " In the new Standalone Zotero 5, it's C:\Users\sdspi\Zotero

dstillman

OK, that makes sense — but those wouldn't be separate drives, right? Or had you symlinked the old data directory to your non-SSD drive? That actually probably would cause Zotero to fall back to copying files individually, which would explain why the migration would take hours and would affect free disk space.

We figured symlinking the data directory to another drive would be sufficiently rare that this mostly wouldn't be an issue, but it's possible we should skip the auto-migration entirely in that case.

sdspieg

Frankly, I don't remember anymore. But yes, I might have - I HAVE done that in the past... The thing is that I guess more and more people have (much faster, but also smaller and more expensive) SSDs as their boot disks. And if, as in my case, your Zotero library is large - you'd rather have it on an older and bigger HDD. Having said that, though, I used to hate the speed of loading the library (both in FF and in the Standalone). So I'm willing to give this a spin... But yeah - maybe giving users the option NOT to migrate would be useful for users like me. But I have no idea how many people would benefit from it, and whether it is worth your time...

dstillman

(We've updated 5.0 to skip auto-migration and show a warning when the old default data directory is symlinked to a different drive.)

sdspieg

Great. Thanks! All of this is truly impressive work - many of us may not always emphasize it, but I am sure I speak for many, many users when I thank you and your team sincerely for your tireless efforts.