Error in upgraded zotero 2.0 database

ecodiv.earth · June 22, 2009

After upgrading to Zotero to 2.0 I found that for one of the references in the upgraded database the first two author fields (of the four authors) were empty. In the old 1.0 Zotero 1.0 database everything seems to be fine. I couldn't find other examples right now, but I find it worrying that the content of the database has changed.

Probably unrelated, but after upgrading there are about 30 (out of over 4258 references) less in the upgraded database and at the same time there are about 40 new folders in the the 'orphaned-files' folder (there were 2 before the upgrade).

dstillman · June 22, 2009

Your previous database may have been corrupted, most likely left over from use of the database in Firefox 2.0, which had database instability problems. Assuming you followed the upgrade instructions and made a backup of your entire data directory, you could try closing Firefox, restoring your previous data directory and then, before upgrading, running your 1.0 database through the DB Repair Tool.

If you still have trouble with the repaired database, send the Upload ID to support@zot...org with instructions for what to look for (e.g., the empty authors) and a link to this thread, and we can take a look.

ecodiv.earth · June 23, 2009

Hi Dan,

You are right there was an corruption problem (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7410?page=1#Item_1), but you already solved that for me :-). Using the repaired version the database was successfully converted during install of Zotero 2. The error with disappearing authors only happened after upgrading to version 2.

I am sending an email to support with the details. Thanks again for the amazing responsiveness and help!

Paulo

dstillman · July 4, 2009

Thanks for reporting this. There was indeed an upgrade bug, in existence since the very first Sync Preview, that under certain circumstances could cause a small number of creators to be turned into either empty strings or other creators (the latter being much less likely). We haven't seen any other reports of this in the past year, so it was likely pretty rare.

I've fixed the bug in the latest development build, and it will appear in 2.0b6, which should be out this weekend. For people who have already upgraded, empty creators will be converted to "[Missing Name]" to make them easier to spot.

I've also created an automated tool that people can use to check for creators that might have been corrupted during the upgrade to 1.5 SP1 – 2.0b5.