Some basic questions about upgrading to 3.0 from 2.1

borchers@nmt.edu
I've been running Zotero 2.1 on several Linux machines, syncing metadata to the Zotero server and storing attachments on my own WebDav server. My local copies of the database are stored in my Firefox profiles on each machine.

Recently, Ubuntu 10.04 forced an "upgrade" to Firefox 10, which isn't compatible with Zotero 2.1 and requires me to upgrade to Zotero 3.0. I'm holding off on this "upgrade" on most of my machines, but the damage is already done on one machine, and downgrading would be painful. Since Firefox 10 is a complete dog, and since I have to upgrade Zotero anyway, I'd like to make the switch to Chrome as my browser, using Zotero stand alone and the Chrome connector. However, I've got a couple of questions:

1. When I start up the stand alone version of Zotero, I presume that it will upgrade the local database to 3.0. Where will it store my local copy of the database? Can I easily move it out from under my Firefox profile (since I'm not planning on having a Firefox profile in the future...) Note that it has been difficult/practically impossible to put the Zotero database outside of the Firefox profile in this version of Linux because of SELinux restrictions.

2. Does the database upgrade also effect the copy of the stored metadata on the Zotero server? How does this interact with my other machines? Must I convert all of them to 3.0 at the same time, or can I mix and match 2.1 and 3.0?

3. What are the requirements for installing Zotero stand alone on Linux systems? Is there a list of distributions on which it is known to work or not work?
  • adamsmith
    1. 3.0 does not perform a database upgrade on 2.1 databases.
    By default, ZSA will share your existing Zotero database. You can tell it not to do that, in which case it will create it's own storage location - by default also in a relatively arcane place. You'd then have to manually transfer your Zotero database (which isn't hard to do, either): http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/transferring_a_library
    I don't know which issue you're referring to which prevents you from moving your database anywhere else - that'd be what I'd recommend otherwise.

    2. Does not apply as there is no database upgrade. You can mix syncing 2.1 and 3.0 - I'd maybe hold-off on using the duplicate detection/merging feature if you're doing that, but I think that's not supposed to cause any problems either.

    3. There is no such a list - it's known to work (i.e. I know of people having it work) at a minimum on Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mint (various versions thereof). I'd suggest you just try it out. I believe the requirements/dependencies are pretty minimal so it should work on most linux distros.
  • borchers@nmt.edu
    Thanks for the lightning fast response!

    To clarify, the problem that I figured out with attempting to store the Zotero database somewhere other than in the Firefox profile was that Ubuntu 10.04 uses SELinux, and has a rule in its configuration that stops Firefox extensions from writing data anywhere in the file system outside of the profile. If you try it, Zotero will give you inscrutable error messages, but the SELinux logs tell the tale of what happened. This is a reasonable security rule, but it means that you can't store your Zotero database anywhere other than in the profile unless you change the SELinux configuration, which is not a job for the faint of heart.

    It looks like it's time for me to go ahead and try 3.0 stand alone and the Chrome connector.
  • borchers@nmt.edu
    I've installed Zotero stand alone and the Chrome connector under 10.04 LTS with no difficulty. I have Zotero stand alone using a data directory in a sensible place on my system, not in the Firefox profile. It all seems to work fine so far.

    Unfortunately, Firefox Zotero will not access the new database that I setup since SELinux is still preventing it from working with files outside of the profile. It should be able to detect that Zotero stand alone is running, but it isn't clear that this is happening. Is there any way to know whether Firefox Zotero is operating in "connector mode"?

    The only remaining issue that I'm having is that Firefox Zotero seems to not be detecting that Zotero stand alone is running- it's still using its old copy of the database stored in my profile.

    With Firefox Zotero, how can I tell whether Zotero is talking to Zotero StandAl
  • adamsmith
    If they're not pointing to the same database, ZFF won't switch to connector mode (if you think about it, that makes a lot of sense).
    If you don't like FF10 anyway - you could just use Chromium and the Chrome connector with ZSA.
  • borchers@nmt.edu
    Right- I don't have any intention to keep running Firefox, just testing all of the permutations. I can see now that it makes sense to require them to use the same database.
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