Metadata Retrieval

johannn
Hey

I have read up on your different issues and solutions to metadata retrieval, but no solution has worked for me. I am often able to get the metadata if I am on the website.

But for older Pdfs or books I add to Zotero will not find any metadata, following is my debug ID:

The Debug ID is D459029356

FYI: I have had to use proxy settings, such that I am able to synchronise standalone with the internet.
  • johannn
    Additional information is that it works fine if I do it from within the browser
  • dstillman
    [JavaScript Error: "HTTP GET http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=[...]&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search failed: Unexpected status code 0"]
    Yeah, this basically means something on your system is breaking Zotero's connection to Google Scholar. What do you mean by "I have had to use proxy settings"? Do you mean that you configured a proxy in Standalone manually (which should never be necessary), or just that you have a system proxy configured?
  • johannn
    I am at a Company where all internet connection is route, i.e. Uses a proxy. Therefore to enable that the standalone program could sync anything I had to go into the about:config to setup This, and the syncing worked from there. But I couldn't ude the metadata. I then uninstalled the app because I read that the issue was not in the firefox plugin. And it was not.

    But I have setup a proxy in firefox for firefox to Work. So is there a proxy for the metadata also in the standalone. I mean that I found a proxy for the syncing there might be another for the metadata connection? Or can you specify a browser that the standalone program utilizes. Since in the config file i think I read something about chrome?
  • dstillman
    No, you shouldn't need to use about:config at all — you should set that back to the default. Zotero should automatically detect your system proxy settings, and that's the only supported configuration.
  • dstillman
    And other browsers aren't relevant here. The connection that matters here is only the one from Standalone itself.
  • johannn
    Should... But does not. So I had to do it. I have uninstalled it to make it work only as a plugin. So your answer is it should not be an issue. But it is ?
  • dstillman
    I'm not sure what you're asking at this point. We can try to help debug problems that are happening that shouldn't be happening. We're not going to spend time with an unsupported configuration that shouldn't be necessary.

    And I'm also not sure what you're saying regarding Zotero for Firefox. That should just use your Firefox connection. (But you also shouldn't need to configure Firefox via about:config.)
  • dstillman
    Basically, Firefox and Standalone use the same mechanism to detect the system proxy settings. If you had to go into about:config in Firefox too, then something isn't right on your system. You should undo that and check your system proxy settings and try to figure out why Firefox and Standalone aren't picking those up.
  • johannn
    Okay, you have in other forums people asking about synchronization problems. people have answered and sayed that when you are behind company firewalls you can enable synchronization with zotero online and standalone. Which means that others has the issue.

    As stated this was an issue for me. I then used the answer to change the proxy. Now the standalone program was able to synchronize with my online account.

    Before that nothing had worked in the standalone program, I then hoped that the standalone program could search for metadata. However this was not the case. In another thread online I found that the plugin for Firefox might not be implicated by the bug.

    Therefore I uninstalled the standalone program, such that the plugin would be the default program. At this point I am able to do every procedure in the Firefox plugin. But the standalone program does not work. Therefore there is an issue with the proxy setup that did not help for the metadata.

    I think the reason the plugin works is that it is in Firefox which already has had the proxy setup. Therefore what possibilities are there for setting up proxy settings in zotero. Since this is possible in all other programs to solve the issue of firewall settings.
  • dstillman
    I can't really say this any more. Configuring proxy settings via about:config shouldn't be necessary and isn't a supported configuration. If something's not working that way, we can't help you. It should work in theory, and it might have been suggested in other threads, but there's no UI for it, we don't test it, and we have no idea if it works. The proper configuration is auto-detection of system proxy settings. If you have your system proxy settings set correctly — which you still haven't even confirmed — and have Standalone at the default proxy settings in about:config, which is to detect the system proxy, then it should work, and the same should be true in Firefox (where's there a UI, but it should still just be set to use the system proxy settings).

    Once you've gotten Firefox and Standalone to both auto-detect the system proxy settings, if something's still not working, we can debug it further that point. You'd need to provide a Debug ID for a metadata retrieval attempt that wasn't working.
  • johannn
    The debug Id in my initial question was of a metadata retrival error. The system IS configured correctly. This is why I have configured proxy settings for all software on the company pc such that they are allowed to access resources that otherwise is not allowed.

    I am forced to edit proxy settings in Firefox texmaker miktex sumatrapdf and others which all work and have UI for this purpose.

    Yes you do not have UI for it but it is possible to change in config. Your auto detect did not work and does not work on the PC behind the company firewall. Your answer to this error is no support try my self. And you do not understand that your system is not working.

    Please do not patronize, I have set everything up correctly but you have no support for proxy which should be the answer. The proxy you are finding is only for accessing resources online such as ieee but not the system proxy, which I need to set to enable zotero to work.

    I understand I will have to look through proxy settings and investigate my self.
  • adamsmith
    edited November 21, 2014
    This sounds odd, maybe we're not understanding what you're saying, but it sounds like the system proxy configuration is such that no software can actually connect to the internet and you need to configure each program individually to override that setting with its own proxy configuration?
    That can't be the way it's intended?
  • johannn
    Maybe I am saying it wrong :) but the system is tight and therefore only company approved applications can enter / exit the system. Therefore for applications such as Skype, Spotify, texmaker, and others not approved, cannot access the internet. However a solution by setting up a proxy in the program solves this issue for all applications. Of course these have a proxy UI.

    Therefore it helped with the syncing to change the proxy but not with the metadata. I cannot explain more until Monday where I will try and experiment one last time.

    Yes it is a bad error description but I have no other information :) but as said there is no error code but an uexpected error occurred and the debug information I uploaded.
  • dstillman
    edited November 21, 2014
    I have set everything up correctly but you have no support for proxy which should be the answer
    Zotero supports proxies for most people without any configuration at all. From the sound of it, you just have an extremely unusual setup — something we've never heard anyone describe before — and you can't really be too surprised if something doesn't work.

    As I said above, though, even with a manual proxy configuration in about:config, there's no reason that everything shouldn't work if some things work. Your best bet may be to run a network packet sniffer (tcpdump, Wireshark, etc.) — or perhaps ask your network admins to do so — to try to figure out what exactly is happening with the metadata retrieval requests. All we can see from the debug output is that the Google Scholar requests are failing locally (i.e., before actually making it to Google).

    Is it possible that you didn't set a proxy for HTTP traffic and only set it for HTTPS? All Zotero requests (syncing, error reports) are HTTPS. The Google Scholar ones are HTTP. That's my best guess for the relevant difference here.
  • johannn
    Perfect, it worked!

    If anyone else has the issue, then the following should be changed
    Tools->Preferences->Advanced-> "Open About:config"

    Change the following parameters:
    For retrieving metadata:
    network.proxy.http
    network.proxy.http_port

    For syncing:
    network.proxy.ssl
    network.proxy.ssl_port
    network.proxy.type

    You should change network.proxy.type to 1, else it did not work for me.
  • dstillman
    OK, great. And just to clarify the above advice one more time for others who might stumbles across this and not read the whole thread: almost no one should ever configure proxy settings in Standalone (or Firefox) manually like this. johannn needed to do so because of an extremely unusual network security setup, but in nearly all cases, one should simply set the system proxy settings, which Standalone (and Firefox) will detect automatically.
This discussion has been closed.