Error starting Zotero on portable firefox

kristina.buffham
I cannot get my Zotero to open on prtable firefox anymore (it worked initially and so i ejected the jump drive and reloaded, however that made no difference). I can force quit normal firefox and then start the portable, howver it loads "with success" and then the normal firefox opens and I recieve a notification that "there was an error starting Zotero". I have tried all of the "suggestions" from the support section of the site but it has made no difference.
  • noksagt
    It sounds like you have both a standard, local installation of Firefox and portable Firefox & that you are unable to launch the latter at all. This would not be a Zotero-specific issue & you are encouraged to refer to support for Firefox portable.

    Why do you have to force-quit firefox, how do you force-quit it, and how do you ensure it has actually quit? If that program has not been killed, it may be that trying to launch portable firefox will actually launch another instance of the local version (which seems to be your primary symptom).
  • CSFN
    -on a mac...you select a program that is running, left click and select force quit so that even if the program is running it will instantly cease.
  • noksagt
    edited April 9, 2009
    My question was specifically to what kristina.buffham was doing. Are you certain she is on OS X? EDIT: Are you the same user (given your duplicate post at http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/6557)?

    Note also that Firefox portable has both a firefox process & a firefox portable process. It is possible (at least on Windows and Linux & probably on the Mac) to not see the Firefox GUI & still have an orphaned firefox process. It is important to check the process list to see that it is truly closed on all platforms. It also is not clear why kristina is forcibly killing it in the first place.
  • noksagt
    From CSFN in the other thread:
    I also deleted the zotero.sqlit file (however it does not stay deleted, everytime I re-open the program it is back).
    Yes, that is by design: if zotero launches with no database, it will create a fresh one.


    Which version of firefox, portable firefox, and Zotero are you using? The first problem that you need to solve is to be able to launch portable firefox & not just the local firefox, right?
  • dstillman
    edited April 9, 2009
    Yes, that is by design: if zotero launches with no database, it will create a fresh one.
    I assume CSFN is in fact referring to zotero.sqlit (not zotero.sqlite), which can cause a NS_ERROR_FILE_IS_LOCKED error on external drives in OS X due to, I believe, a long filename bug with FAT filesystems on OS X (or mozStorage on OS X, at least).

    But yes, getting Firefox and Firefox Portable to each start up properly is the first step here.
  • msteuernagel
    edited April 11, 2009
    I seem to have a similar problem, though I don't have any problem with Firefox itself.

    I have Zotero 1.5b2 installed at home on firefox 3.08 running on Mac OSX 10.5.6. It works fine, but this is an iMac, and I want to be able to use Zotero at the library too.
    I successfully installed Portable Firefox 3.0r4.0 on a pen drive (a clean install, without importing my plugins), installed Zotero 1.5b2, went into settings and had Zotero save my library in the pendrive, and put in my Zotero Sync information. Everything worked well, it synced with my library, and I was able to use it.

    The problem is that every time I restart Portable Firefox (even without doing anything else in between), I get the message: "There was an error starting Zotero.", and I can't get it to work again no matter what. I've tried repeating the whole installation several time, always with the same result: it works fine the first time, but every time I restart, it doesn't work.

    The only workaround is deleting the pen drive Zotero Library before I restart Portable Firefox, and have it sync with the server. It works fine, but also works only one time.

    Does anyone have any clue about how to fix this?
  • dstillman
    msteuernagel: Are you quitting Firefox before ejecting the pen drive? Have you looked to see if there's a zotero.sqlit (not zotero.sqlite) file in the data directory after closing (desktop) Firefox?

    You can see if there's still a Firefox process running by using Activity Monitor, but it's likely just the FAT bug mentioned above, which requires deleting the zotero.sqlit file.
  • msteuernagel
    edited April 11, 2009
    Hi Dan,
    thanks for the fast response. I just updated my post to reflect a couple new tests i ran while you where posting your response. deleting the .sqlit does solve the problem. i was just wondering if there was any other way to solve this. but if it's a known bug, i'll just live with it and wait for an update to fix it.
    Since this is a known issue, I'll just follow the other thread.
  • msteuernagel
    just to follow-up: This is definitely a FAT problem. I reformatted the drive with Mac OSX Extended, and it solved the issue for me.
    I'm running: Zotero 1.5b2 on Portable Firefox 3.0r4.0 on Mac OSX 10.5.6.
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