Zotero very slow and Firefox freezing

rhett
I just switched to Zotero and am using it on a netbook with an Intel Atom chip and Ubuntu Linux. It takes ages to load my library and respond to any commands, if is doesn't freeze (library has ~4000 ref with ~1500 pdfs)

From reading the Forums this doesn't seem to be a common problem - what could be wrong with my set up?
  • alexuw
    I have a similar netbook (eee pc 901) running Ubuntu, library is only 1200-some items, zero pdfs. (I decided a while back for various reasons not to use the pdf-related features.)

    Right now Zotero is slow but usable on that netbook. But my seat-of-the-pants impression is that performance is slowly deteriorating as the library grows. Makes sense it would become unusable at some point, and 4000 items might be beyond that point.

    An obvious problem is when you initially open the zotero pane, it appears to load up the entire library. Another is defining tags - deathly slow.

    Unfortunately I'm not aware of any plans to optimize performance in a way that would make any difference here.

    One tip that might help a little: my netbook is set to shift the CPU to "powersave" mode when off battery. Setting it to normal does speed things up a bit (although it runs down the battery much faster). But once loaded, I find performance is not so bad (YYMV), so I just bump up the CPU to make the initial loading of windows slightly less annoying, then go back to powersave mode.
  • dstillman
    An obvious problem is when you initially open the zotero pane, it appears to load up the entire library.
    Keep at least one Firefox window open and this won't happen. Zotero does a lot of caching when the Zotero pane is first opened in a Firefox session so that later use is much quicker. (On OS X, where the application process remains open even when all Firefox windows are closed, this isn't an issue, and I would say that having at least one Firefox window open all the time is an increasingly common pattern on Windows as well.)
    Another is defining tags - deathly slow.
    Try closing the tag selector before defining tags.
    Unfortunately I'm not aware of any plans to optimize performance in a way that would make any difference here.
    Performance is something we're always working on.
  • alexuw
    Dan, thanks for the comments. Is there a standard data set for testing/debugging? That would be one way to determine if rhett has some other problem vs. database too big / hardware too weak.

    rhett, if you're interested I can try out your database (on my eee pc) - send me an email (check my profile).
  • dstillman
    There isn't a standard dataset, but we can often tell from debug output (which can be logged and submitted from the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs) if something is taking longer than it should.
  • agarzar
    Dan, thanks for your recomendations. They were really helpful. I had similar problems specially in defining tags. Closing the tag selector made a lot of difference.
    Thanks again.
  • rhett
    Dan and Agarzar

    Many thanks for your feedback and apologies for not responding earlier (I have been in the field).

    I just timed how long it took to load the library - 67 secs.

    this is all I got with the debug output (doesn't seem very useful).
    (4)(+0000000): Registering observer for [collection,search,share,group,bucket] in notifier with hash ei'

    (5)(+0000006): SELECT itemTypeID AS id, typeName AS name FROM itemTypes WHERE display=2 ORDER BY typeName

    (5)(+0000003): SELECT itemTypeID AS id, typeName AS name FROM itemTypes WHERE display=1 ORDER BY typeName

    I'll log out and log in again and see if it generates anyother information.

    Rhett
  • rhett
    That generated an enormous output. I tried posting it below here but I think I exceeding the word limit for a posting - anyway it would let me. So I'll just submit it in the normal way.

    Opening Zotero having kept a firefox window open took just 3-4 secs, so the caching does seem to be the main problem at least on loading. I'll try to report other problems as they occur.

    Thank you for your help and advice. Rhett
  • rhett
    The Debug ID is D750090029.
  • rhett
    A small but irritating problem that arose recently - Zotero appears to open into a window that is too big for the firefox window leaving the scroll bars off the bottom of the firefox window. The Zotero icon is also off the window although I check it is switched on.

    The problem does not exist in Firefox alone. Rhett
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