Everything is slow.

npagnucco
Hello.

My problem is that Zotero has become incredibly slow. This appears to be for entering new entries, downloading bibliographic info from websites, and searching for entries. Often, just entering a new article will freeze Firefox for several minutes (as in, I can go to the bathroom and come back before it is done with a search).

It's always been a bit bad, but it is getting worse. I suspect part of the problem is that my database is rather large: 8,434 items to date. I'm running Firefox 16 on a laptop that's under 3 years old & that has 4 gig of RAM.

I fear I'm not as knowledgeable as I would like. I'll happily give whatever info people need to help me with this, though if it's not immediately obvious I may request you tell me how to find the information you request.

I realize that there are some threads about specific things being slow, but since my issues seems to be rather universal, I started a new discussion. If this was a mistake, I apologize for that as well.
  • dstillman
    I suspect part of the problem is that my database is rather large: 8,434 items to date.
    That's not unreasonably large. Does that include child items?

    Have you emptied your trash?

    How big is your full-text index, in the Search pane of the Zotero preferences?
  • npagnucco
    With child items, it is 14,400 items.

    There are 3 items in the trash at the moment.

    Max characters to index per file: 500,000
    Index stats
    Index: 36
    Partial: 0
    Unindexed: 85
    Words: 7,021
  • dstillman
    Often, just entering a new article will freeze Firefox for several minutes
    Can you provide a Debug ID for an example of this?
  • npagnucco
    ...well, that's annoying. Now the lag is down to maybe 5 seconds or so. I have not closed anything, or done anything differently, but now I sound delusional. Charming.

    At any rate, my Debug IS is D1272019944
  • dstillman
    This still does look somewhat less than ideal.

    Is your Zotero data directory stored in the default location, or have you moved it elsewhere?
  • npagnucco
    I have the data directory set to be a separate folder in My Documents, where it gets automatically backed up into a cloud.

    Based on your question, I take this isn't a good idea.
  • adamsmith
    Is that folder synced to any other computer?
  • npagnucco
    No. However, the cloud service I use (sugarsync) does real-time updating of the files it backs up. It appears to update every time I open Firefox, whether I use Zotero or not.
  • dstillman
    edited November 21, 2012
    You can try disabling SugarSync to see if that speeds things up.

    From your debug output, it looks like you're in a view with parent items expanded—a saved search, maybe? Is it faster just in the library root with all parent items collapsed?
  • AKGeoChad
    I'm having a similar problem, and have been ever since using Zotero a couple years ago. When I do a quick search, then try to edit the citation information, Zotero locks up for awhile. It happens in both Filemaker and Standalone.

    I ran a debug: D1173365325

    During the debug test, I did a quick search for an authors last name, scrolled to a record, and edited the name. After finishing the edits and hitting enter Zotero locked up for 2 minutes. I can't tell you have annoying this is. All I wanted to do is add a period to the end of the author's initials and it took 2 minutes. Please fix this.

    I don't think it matters, but you ask others with sluggish issues for the index info:

    Max characters: 500000
    Max pages: 400
    Indexed: 1091
    Partial: 53
    Unindexed: 815
    Words: 348036

    I store my library on a second internal drive, not the default C:users.
  • dstillman
    edited December 3, 2012
    AKGeoChad: Is it faster if you clear the search before making the edit? Also, how long does the initial search take, before the edit?
  • mark
    I have sluggish performance too. Zotero becomes unresponsive for 2-15 seconds when adding new items for instance. From troubleshooting some time ago it seemed that the main reason was the fulltext indexing process. For a while I had fulltext indexing disabled but that's not a nice workaround because the fulltext capabilities are so useful.

    My workaround currently is to use the Chrome connector to save sources to my library. That way I can at least go on browsing while Zotero catches up and does the fulltext indexing.
  • AKGeoChad
    Dan,

    Sorry for the delay.

    I have resorted to hitting the cancel search button before editing citations. Doing this fixes the slow-down, but it is clunky when I need to, say, standardize all the occurrences of an author's name for every article they are an author (so I don't have a problem with the in-text citations using the Work link [see my other post]). The slow down is apparent only while I have text in the search box.

    Searches have always been relatively quick. Although, sometimes when I type something into the search box there will be a delay in the typing, but it's not too long.

    Mark - I have been wondering if it has to do with the indexing. I'd rather not turn that feature off, because, like you said, it is very handy. However, if the problem doesn't get resolved, I may need to only use the Windows indexing and not rely on the Zotero full-text indexing.
  • dstillman
    AKGeoChad: You probably know this, but if you're just searching for authors you can change the search mode to "Title, Creator, Year", which might make this faster. Obviously this doesn't help when you actually need to do a full-text search, but I would think it would help for other searches.

    We'll see if we can figure out why you're seeing such a delay when making edits with a search open. Worst-case scenario, I would expect the delay after editing to be equivalent to a single fresh search. A delay of two minutes definitely seems to indicate a problem.
  • AKGeoChad
    Dan,

    I didn't know to look for the "Title, Creator, Year" option. Searching using that option appears to fix the editing slow-down issue. When I go back to the "everything" option it takes forever to register the edit, whereas, when I switch to the "Title, Creator, Year" option editing is no problem.
  • dstillman
    I've created a ticket for this, since while I'm not seeing all the database queries you're getting, I'm definitely seeing more than necessary.
  • dstillman
    edited February 4, 2013
    AKGeoChad: I believe I've fixed the issue you were experiencing—and a number of related issues—in the latest 3.0 Branch dev XPI, and 3.0.12 should be out very soon with the fix. (There are no dev builds of Standalone right now, but if you wanted to test this out you could install the 3.0 Branch dev XPI into Firefox. If you haven't used it before, it will offer to share your existing Standalone data directory by default, so switching back and forth between the two is as simple as opening and closing Standalone. If you do install the dev XPI, you'll want to switch back to the official 3.0.12 XPI once it's out.)
  • AKGeoChad
    Dan: I tested out editing author names (and other fields) while in Search For Everything mode and it was fast. No delay like before. Thanks for getting this fixed. Now I can just leave it in Everything mode. I'll let you know if I run into the issue again.
    Cheers
  • megan.reif
    I am having the same problem of extremely slow operation overall on Standalone or online on Google Chrome. All steps show no problem with the DB. Will this fix work on Standalone version?
  • adamsmith
    this would be fixed in the recent version of Standalone. Start a new thread, provide details about the size of your library and a debug ID for a couple of slow operations.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
    (that said, Zotero basically can't affect the speed for Chrome, so there's a good change something else is going on).
  • megan.reif
    adamsmith, can you tell me whether adding more folders or adding more tags slows things down? I'm right-clicking to delete many tags (which takes forever). I wonder if there is one method of organization that makes Zotero faster or slower.
  • adamsmith
    huge amounts of tags would slow Zotero down I believe, yes.
This discussion has been closed.