Zotero crash during search - how to debug?

In advanced search, if I search for 'Attachment Content' 'contains' '%' I get results, but if I use 'does not contain', Zotero crashes. I tried to get debug output, but upon re-opening Zotero, it's empty. Documentation suggests "Start Zotero via the Cygwin terminal" but I don't think I have Cygwin terminal, and I didn't see further explanation. Any guidance appreciated.
  • Crashes as in closes, or crashes as in freezes? After how long?

    (If you don't know what Cygwin is, it's not expected that you'd use it. Unfortunately debugging options on Windows are just limited with the built-in tools.)
  • edited September 15, 2018
    Crashes as in closes. The windows disappear. Time is between 10-60 seconds after I click 'search'.
  • Do you get an error message from Windows?

    If you run the task manager, do you see the zotero.exe process using more and more memory? If so, how much before it closes? Does this happen if you close other programs running on your system?
  • No error message from Windows. With all major programs closed, I do see zotero.exe using more memory, up to about 2.8M. I have 8M RAM. The crash doesn't happen 100% of the time, but I never get any results for the search, which seems wrong because I have attachments without any text.
  • Can you run the search with debug output logging enabled and generate a Debug ID 15 seconds or so after you started the search? You can use View Output to watch the output as it's going, to confirm that it's logging stuff the whole time.
  • edited September 15, 2018
    Debug ID: D833161954
    Note: after I did this and viewed output, while Zotero was putting the debug output in the view output window, Zotero crashed again. I had to do it a 2nd time, and then I did the search, waited 10 seconds, pressed 'clear' and closed the search window, and then disabled debug output, clicked 'view output', and submitted while the 'view output' was still presenting new lines. Then Zotero crashed/closed again.
  • Hi, will someone look at this Debug ID? Thanks.
  • Sorry to be a pest, but I haven't seen a response for 4 days, which seems unusual on these forums for debugging. Any help?
  • Hi, @danstillman, you suggested that I post again in this thread if I thought my post was overlooked. You'll see I did that and waited fairly patiently. Sorry for the duplicate thread.

    Can you or someone else help?

    I am also continuing to have difficulty getting correct search results when searching 'Attachment Content' - no results when I am sure the attached pdfs with the search terms exist. I don't know if this is related to the crash problem.
  • Hi, will someone look at this Debug ID? Thanks.
  • I'm afraid there's no solution for this right now. If it crashes for you, don't use that search, or try on a different computer. For me, memory usage does increase during the search, though not to nearly that extent, but that will depend on the specifics of your library, and the effect will depend on your OS. (I assume you mean that it's using 2.8 GB. In the current Windows version, if memory usage approaches 4 GB, it will indeed crash.) I'm not yet sure why memory usage is increasing during this search, but it's something we'll look into.

    I'm not totally sure what you're trying to do, though, and it might help if you explain that. Note that 'Attachment Content' 'contains'/'does not contain' '%' isn't actually any sort of supported syntax. '%' happens to have special meaning in some search fields because of the underlying database that we use, but that doesn't apply to attachment content searches, so you're really just searching for a literal '%' character (or the absence of it) when you do this.

    If you're trying to find PDFs without indexed content, you'd be better off doing something like 'Attachment File Type' 'is' 'PDF' and 'Attachment Content' 'does not contain' 'the'. A dedicated search condition for indexed state is planned but hasn't yet been implemented.
    I am also continuing to have difficulty getting correct search results when searching 'Attachment Content' - no results when I am sure the attached pdfs with the search terms exist.
    Start a new thread for that with the specific conditions you're using in the search.
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