Upgrade StorageFirefox crashed, data is all gone
I just found out this software and very excited about it. Spent almost one day to input/download data to Zotero. Then firefox crashed due to windows problem, all the data is lost when I reopen firefox. Just realized that there is no "save" button in zotero, do I have to close firefox to save the data? Is there any way to recover the lost? (is the data saved to a temp file somewhere?)
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot.
I just read another post about losing data due to firefox crash which is similar to my case, and realized that my crash took place when I was trying to attach a file to a reference. Hope this is useful information.
Is your Zotero library now completely empty? Did you receive any error messages upon restarting Firefox? Was other Firefox data (bookmarks, etc.) affected? Can you successfully add new items to the library?
One thing you could do is send us a copy of the zotero.sqlite file at support@zo.....org, and we can take a look to see if it's damaged and any data is actually still there. The file can be found in the 'zotero' subdirectory of the Firefox profile directory.
When I restarted Firefox it told me Firefox was not closed properly and asked me if I want to restore the sessions. I chose yes and the web pages I was reading came back, the bookmark looks fine (I didn't add new bookmarks yesterday so I can't tell if there was really no problem). Only the Zotero items I entered yesterday were gone. I didn't close Firefox the whole day yesterday.
I checked the Zotero files, all the new attachments are still in the storage folder but the information in Zotero were gone.
I entered a few new references after the crash and it worked fine, except that the zotero.sqlite file is now not the right-after-crash version. I'll email it to you, hope it's still useful.
Thanks a lot.
Here are my steps:
1. using Zotero normally.
2. Right click a collection and choose New Subcollection...
3. firefox.exe -- Application Error
The instruction at "0x0076b575" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read".
I have had this happen twice (within a week) and both times Zotero loses the recent data.
The problem does not happen every time I add a subcollection like this - only rarely.
1) Crashes
Crashes indicate bugs in Firefox itself. With sufficient debugging, we may be able to find out what code in Zotero is triggering the crash and work around it until the Firefox bug is fixed (which often won't be until the next major version of Firefox). On Macs, information on the latest crash can be found at the bottom of ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/firefox-bin.crash.log. I don't know of any equivalent built-in functionality on Windows or Linux, so on those platforms we would need steps to consistently reproduce the crash.
Note that we actually may have fixed the crash you're referring to on the dev branch, though it's hard to know for sure.
2) Zotero errors
Errors in Zotero code show up in the Error Console if the javascript.options.showInConsole pref is enabled (as described in the Advanced Instructions section of the Reporting Bugs page). Such errors should be rare and are easy to fix if reported. We're including an error reporting feature in the next beta that will make it much easier for end users to send reports of these errors and help us eliminate them from the code.
These errors don't cause data loss themselves, but they can result in Zotero being left in a funky state that is vulnerable to loss of data modified since the error if a crash occurs. Restarting Firefox fixes things. Zotero's solution since Beta 3 has been to disable most UI updates while in this vulnerable state, which should make Zotero cease to function properly and (theoretically) prompt a restart by the user.
3) Data loss
We certainly agree that data loss is unacceptable. The only way this could occur, as far as we know, is if a Zotero error occurs during an SQL transaction and then a subsequent crash occurs before the user notices that the Zotero UI isn't updating properly. This combination of events should be rare, but we believe this is what has happened in the few reports of data loss that we've received.
It should be pretty clear that Zotero isn't working properly after an error, but if someone is just adding references via the URL bar icon and not interacting with the Zotero pane much, it might go unnoticed. We're making additional changes for the next beta that should disable Zotero more fully after an error occurs, including providing an error message that instructs the user to restart Firefox when attempting to save a web page via the URL bar icon.
Again, Zotero errors and Firefox crashes should both be quite rare, but until the next beta release, users should be able to avoid any potential for loss of data by keeping the Zotero pane open when adding items. If the items don't appear immediately in the items list or other UI oddities occur while using Zotero, simply restart Firefox to reset Zotero to its default state. (Ideally, if this does happen, users should first follow the steps in the Advanced Instructions section of the Reporting Bugs page before restarting and let us know what errors appear in the Error Console, but this, too, will be unnecessary once the next beta is released with built-in error reporting.)