Zotero or FF 75.0 broke proxying on my computer

drkdlitwak · April 15, 2020

I use MS Windows 10. I am using Firefox 75.0. (The latest upgrade might have caused my problem). I am the reference librarian for an academic library and I do my own research. I've been able to log into my library system for years. I have Zotero installed. It never caused problems--until now. I can no longer log into the system. I get a message that Zotero has a problem with the proxy I use automatically to access the library. After the flashing yellow message, there is a message if I want to continue, click "next." Alas,nothing I do, no clicking of the button, no clicking the "x" on the yellow error message bar, kills the message or allows me to go forward. This just started on Saturday, April 11, 2020 in the evening. I'm wondering if Zotero got an update right I cannot opoen my login page or if I do, I get this error immediately. I'd try to attach a picture but I have not be able to get a screen shot that includes the yellow bar message. I did not update Windows 10 just before this started. I might have updated Firefox. Zotero does automatic updats. I rarely use Zotero. It looked like I solved this by telling Firefox to auto-detect proxies. That seemed to work temporarily but the problem has returned. So, I disabled Zotero. Now, I get an error because post is not supposed by the application. What in the world does Zotero have to do with how my system talks to another website for logging in? How do I fix this? Do I need to delete Zotero permanently (and lose all the data I've put into it)? This problem only happens when logging tino the library, which uses a proxy for security purposes. I have to be able to log into my library's system. What is Zotero doing to cause this? Thanks.

Ken

dstillman · April 15, 2020

This isn't about the Zotero app — it's a conflict between the Zotero Connector in your browser and a web-based proxy you've used.

I get a message that Zotero has a problem with the proxy I use automatically to access the library. After the flashing yellow message, there is a message if I want to continue, click "next."

That's the exact message you're receiving?

Right-click on the Save to Zotero button in the Firefox toolbar, click Preferences, go to Advanced, click Config Editor, click through the warning, and then double click on the entry for proxies.proxies and, if you don't mind, email the full value to us at support@zotero.org with a link to this thread. You can then close that and either click Reset to clear all stored proxy settings or go back to the Proxies tab of the connector preferences and try to figure out which entry is incorrect. From the sound of it, if you click on the configured proxy in the Proxies tab, there'll probably be a hostname entry in the bottom section that matches your library address or the proxy address itself, which shouldn't be the case — that should only contain things like jstor.org, sciencedirect.com, etc., which appear when you click through to gated resources via the proxy. If your institution's proxy server redirects to itself for some reason, you can end up with an invalid entry. So if you see an obviously incorrect entry, you can just delete that without clearing all the entries.