Zotero crashes intermittendly while working in Word

djross3

Over the last few days Zotero has crashed (OSX Mojave, latest Zotero 5.0.90) intermittently when adding/editing a cite in Word. I fill in the references and pages in the pop up then press enter to insert it, and Zotero crashes, leaving an incomplete field in Word (365). This happens maybe 10% of the time, with no clear pattern. If I restart both Zotero and Word, it works, but after some time it will happen again.

I realize that information is not enough to give feedback to the developers. What would be the best way to report this information? Should I run the debug continuously until it happens? Will that capture the relevant event even if Zotero crashes?

dstillman

By crash you mean that Zotero is quitting completely? If you open Console via Spotlight and click on Crash Reports in the sidebar, do you see a crash report for one of these Zotero crashes? If so, can you email it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

djross3

Yes, it crashes completely (the program disappears and a warning appears). I've sent a crash report by email. Thank you.

dstillman

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff6d5ea59c flockfile + 18
1 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff6d5f158a rewind + 45
2 libzoteroMacWordIntegration.dylib 0x0000000129a22675 getTemporaryFile + 405
3 libzoteroMacWordIntegration.dylib 0x0000000129a1f7f6 setTextRaw + 598
4 libzoteroMacWordIntegration.dylib 0x0000000129a1f4c1 setText + 129
5 XUL 0x0000000113a4efe4 ffi_call_unix64 + 76
6 XUL 0x0000000113a4e56a ffi_call + 922
7 XUL 0x000000011328b0ca 0x11004e000 + 52678858

@adomasven might have some idea, but I don't recall other reports of this, so it might be something with Mojave. You could try upgrading to Catalina. (Catalina isn't exactly a win of an OS, but Big Sur will be out in a month, so Catalina is as stable as it's going to be.)

djross3

Thanks for checking on it. It's a nuisance but doesn't prohibit Zotero from working, just requires a restart sometimes.

(I can't upgrade because that will disable crucial 32-bit software I use.)

dstillman

@djross3: Do you know if this is new since 5.0.90 (August 29)? There was a build change for Big Sur compatibility that could potentially have affected this, though, again, no other reports. If you can reproduce this easily enough, you could try with 5.0.89 after temporarily disabling app.update.auto in the Config Editor to prevent auto-updates (though don't forget to switch that back or else you won't receive further updates automatically).

djross3

I have 11 similar (I think) crash reports logged since Sept. 6. I may have not been using Zotero regularly in the week between Aug 29 and Sept 6, so that would fit.

It's difficult to reproduce in that it's intermittent. Happens about once per day (imprecise average), depending on how much writing I'm doing.