Profile can't be loaded after installing Zotero 5.0 on Linux
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So, at this point I'm thinking how am I going to continue my academic work?
Since Zotero connector is no longer supported I understand I must now rely on the standalone library.
I therefore followed instructions online and downloaded Zotero 5.
When I try to launch it from the terminal a pop up says:
Your Zotero profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.
There is no gui to look for or link to the lost profile.
Therefore
I've identified a folder, which I am really hoping is my data/reference library at .mozilla/firefox/mwad0hks.default/zotero/zotero.sqlite
I have tried copying this file using the terminal to
.zotero/
.zotero/zotero/
.zotero/zotero/wf5t0060.default/
All of this results in the same pop-up: 'Your Zotero profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.'
I'm seriously worried that I will lose my library. I use it daily in my academic work. and restoring zotero to functionality on my system is an absolute priority before I can continue with my work.
As for .zotero/zotero/wf5t0060.default, that's your profile directory. What's in there now? If there are files in there, most likely you're running SELinux, AppArmor, or similar and it's preventing Zotero from accessing that directory.
8.db key3.db secmod.db
compatibility.ini mimeTypes.rdf sessionCheckpoints.json
cookies.sqlite ot11hdea.default SiteSecurityServiceState.txt
crashes permissions.sqlite times.json
extensions.ini places.sqlite webappsstore.sqlite
extensions.json pluginreg.dat xulstore.json
formhistory.sqlite prefs.js zotero
I tried moving the folder .mozilla/firefox/mwad0hks.default/zotero to a directory I made ~/Zotero (the installation did not automatically make one there). However, I see exactly the same error.
'Your Zotero profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.'
I'm not understanding something about the principle here. What is the profile and what is its purpose? What is the data in relation to the profile? is there anyway I can simply read the data and export it?
I see the same data files in .zotero .zotero/zotero and .zotero/zotero/wf5t0060.default/zotero
The first two are definitely there because I copied them there in the hope of restoring the library.
The profile contains your settings. The data directory ('zotero', with zotero.sqlite, etc.) used to be stored in either the Zotero or Firefox profile, but in 5.0 that gets moved to ~/Zotero. The 'zotero' in your Zotero profile directory might be from when you used Zotero Standalone previously, if you told it to use a separate data directory at that time — you can check the timestamps. (Zotero 5.0 would automatically migrate the more recent one, and the other could be deleted.)
But you can ignore all that for now. The first thing you need to do is fix your security settings or permissions so that Zotero can access the profile directory.
ls Zotero/zotero/
locate storage translators zotero.sqlite.1.bak
pipes styles zotero.sqlite zotero.sqlite.bak
ls -lg Zotero/zotero/
total 16736
drwxrwxrwx 2 a 4096 Nov 15 18:55 locate
drwxrwxrwx 2 a 4096 Nov 15 18:55 pipes
drwxrwxrwx 173 a 28672 Nov 15 18:55 storage
drwxrwxrwx 2 a 4096 Nov 15 18:55 styles
drwxrwxrwx 2 a 77824 Nov 15 18:55 translators
-rw-rw-rw- 1 a 5664768 Nov 14 08:49 zotero.sqlite
-rw-rw-rw- 1 a 5660672 Nov 12 21:21 zotero.sqlite.1.bak
-rw-rw-rw- 1 a 5664768 Nov 14 09:12 zotero.sqlite.bak
I run zotero and the problem persists: 'Your Zotero profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.'
My entire PhD's worth of references is inaccessible.
What else can I do?
I know you're worried about your data, but that's not actually the problem. The data is still there and you'll be able to open it on another computer, restore it locally, etc., so forget about that for the moment. The problem is getting Zotero to run at all.
A very big Thank you