Zotero Linux tarball and GRUB

dstillman
This discussion was created from comments split from: Install Zotero standalone from Ubuntu/ Linux Mint PPA.
  • permatur
    Hi! I recently installed Zotero standalone on ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS running on a Lenovo T460 i5. I downloaded the tarball Zotero-4.0.29.10_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 which automatically starts downloading through the terminal. I now have Zotero on my laptop, yet everytime I have to get updates for ubuntu it first wants to download the tarball again and reinstall.

    Ok, annoying but.... then a few days ago my computer wouldn´t boot and enters grub rescue mode with the following error GRUB error /boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod

    So now I decide I have some problems with the GRUB so I make a liveUSB with Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS and boot up from a USB to try and do a boot-repair. So far so good everything goes fine, but then when I have to purge and reinstall my GRUB files, Zotero hijacks the process and wants to download the tarball again and install it... the installation fails of course so I cant move on with the GRUB installation. I have removed and purged the PPA and .list files too, but it is no use.

    Any help much appreciated!
  • dstillman
    I don't really have any idea what you're saying here. The Zotero tarball from this site is just an archive of files, the same as the Firefox tarball. It doesn't "automatically start downloading" anything through the terminal — it's just a file you download. There's no installation process other than unzipping it. It doesn't have the slightest thing to do with GRUB or your system boot process, and it doesn't hijack anything. It's totally separate from the third-party PPA offered in the thread you posted to, and it has nothing to do with the Ubuntu update process — it just updates files in the directory it's running from.

    If you're talking about the third-party PPA in the other thread, you can post back in that thread, but you should be clear that you're not referring to the official tarball. (And that PPA should also have zero relation to GRUB, so I still don't know what you mean there.)
  • dstillman
    edited June 27, 2017
    I guess maybe you're referring to the third-party script in the other thread? All that does is download the official tarball, extract it, and create a menu item. And as far as I know the package from that PPA is just a wrapper around the script. So I'm not sure what else you did, but you should be clear that this isn't Zotero doing anything, and I suspect you'll need to debug this on your own.
  • permatur
    Hi dstillman, thanks for all the info and for making my problem a little clearer. I know that a lot of the things I wrote don't have a clear relation to each other, but I just wanted to give an overall picture of my situation. Anyway, I guess what I want to know is how do I stop the third-party script from installing itself. If I understand your suggestions above, the method in which I am installing Zotero Standalone is by downloading the third-party PPA which acts as a wrapper package for the official tarball from Zotero.

    Just to give a walk through of my situation now... so I am running boot-repair and as I explained previously the tarball starts downloading while trying to purge and reinstall my GRUB files. The installation of Zotero cannot be completed and I get the following message:

    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot "/mnt/boot-sav/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root" dpkg --configure -a
    Setting up zotero-standalone (4.0.29.10-ubuntu4) ...
    >>> Downloading Zotero standalone 4.0.29.10 for x86_64
    >>> URL: http://download.zotero.org/standalone/4.0.29.10/Zotero-4.0.29.10_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
    --2017-06-28 12:19:55-- http://download.zotero.org/standalone/4.0.29.10/Zotero-4.0.29.10_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
    Resolving download.zotero.org (download.zotero.org)... 205.251.219.80, 205.251.219.93, 205.251.219.252, ...
    Connecting to download.zotero.org (download.zotero.org)|205.251.219.80|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
    Length: 42924504 (41M) [application/x-bzip2]
    Saving to: ‘/tmp/zotero.tar.bz2’

    /tmp/zotero.tar.bz2 100%[===================>] 40.94M 2.07MB/s in 24s

    2017-06-28 12:20:24 (1.70 MB/s) - ‘/tmp/zotero.tar.bz2’ saved [42924504/42924504]

    >>> The destination folder (/opt/zotero) exists
    >>> Aborting installation, sorry!
    dpkg: error processing package zotero-standalone (--configure):
    subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    zotero-standalone
    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot "/mnt/boot-sav/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root" apt-get install -fy
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done
    The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
    libcapnp-0.5.3 linux-headers-4.4.0-77 linux-headers-4.4.0-77-generic
    linux-image-4.4.0-77-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-77-generic
    Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 34 not upgraded.
    1 not fully installed or removed.
    After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
    Setting up zotero-standalone (4.0.29.10-ubuntu4) ...
    >>> Downloading Zotero standalone 4.0.29.10 for x86_64
    >>> URL: http://download.zotero.org/standalone/4.0.29.10/Zotero-4.0.29.10_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
    --2017-06-28 12:20:28-- http://download.zotero.org/standalone/4.0.29.10/Zotero-4.0.29.10_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
    Resolving download.zotero.org (download.zotero.org)... 205.251.219.80, 205.251.219.93, 205.251.219.252, ...
    Connecting to download.zotero.org (download.zotero.org)|205.251.219.80|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
    Length: 42924504 (41M) [application/x-bzip2]
    Saving to: ‘/tmp/zotero.tar.bz2’

    /tmp/zotero.tar.bz2 100%[===================>] 40.94M 2.25MB/s in 23s

    2017-06-28 12:20:55 (1.80 MB/s) - ‘/tmp/zotero.tar.bz2’ saved [42924504/42924504]

    >>> The destination folder (/opt/zotero) exists
    >>> Aborting installation, sorry!
    dpkg: error processing package zotero-standalone (--configure):
    subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    zotero-standalone
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

    I understand if this is an issue that I need to debug myself, however I am not very savvy at these sorts of things as you probably noticed, can I therefore ask whether it is possible to stop Zotero from installing itself during the boot-repair? Alternately, I would like to post this question to say the Ubuntu forum, with your comments included if that is ok?

    Best regards
  • adamsmith
    You should be able to remove the PPA, which in turn should really take care of this -- but I don't know enough about the exact situation you're in to tell you how to do this, but this discusses various options, many of them available through terminal: https://askubuntu.com/questions/307/how-can-ppas-be-removed

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