Upgrade Storageproblem with opening Standalone (on a Mac Sierra 10.12.6) Report ID: 549505638
Hi
(first time posting to this forum. have been a Zotero standalone user for years with no problems.)
this problem seems to be related to changing my university account password. I use Zotero Standalone on a university laptop and it was working fine until I changed my password. I was not using Firefox connector - only Standalone. I de-installed Zotero and re-installed it, not from Firefox/Zotero website, but from the university software centre from where we are advised to download apps.
so the problem: when I open Zotero Standalone, two icons open in the dock. I get an error message that says 'zotero-bin is trying to install a new helper tool.' and 'Software Update Failed'. I need to get temporary admin rights in order to put in my name and password in the first field - I've tried that but it doesn't help. when I close and re-start Zotero I get the same error messages.
I click on Cancel and OK respectively and then Standalone works as normal. but there are still two icons on the dock - a second one that works and another one that is 'not responding' and I either Force Quit it or it eventually quits itself (this is the one that first opens with I click on the Zotero icon in Applications).
(Standalone does not actually work perfectly: if I try to drag a reference into a library collection, the first time it works but trying it a second time does not work.)
in Terminal, there are several lines e.g.
JavaScript error: chrome://zotero/content/standalone/standalone.xul, line 1: TypeError: ZoteroPane_Local is undefined
I don't know command line well enough to know what to do in Terminal, nor do I know what permissions I have on this university computer.
I've never even opened Chrome on this laptop.
I was not using Firefox Connector, but five minutes ago I installed it. when I click on the icon, it saves the webpage to the open Standalone.
now I'm in technical territory I don't know. is the Zotero app I download from the university software centre the problem? why the error message 'Software Update Failed' every time? why does there appear (to me) to be 2 apps, one that cannot open and then crashes and one that opens? I took the problem to the university IT help support and they had *no* idea what to do. so I'm posting here.
(first time posting to this forum. have been a Zotero standalone user for years with no problems.)
this problem seems to be related to changing my university account password. I use Zotero Standalone on a university laptop and it was working fine until I changed my password. I was not using Firefox connector - only Standalone. I de-installed Zotero and re-installed it, not from Firefox/Zotero website, but from the university software centre from where we are advised to download apps.
so the problem: when I open Zotero Standalone, two icons open in the dock. I get an error message that says 'zotero-bin is trying to install a new helper tool.' and 'Software Update Failed'. I need to get temporary admin rights in order to put in my name and password in the first field - I've tried that but it doesn't help. when I close and re-start Zotero I get the same error messages.
I click on Cancel and OK respectively and then Standalone works as normal. but there are still two icons on the dock - a second one that works and another one that is 'not responding' and I either Force Quit it or it eventually quits itself (this is the one that first opens with I click on the Zotero icon in Applications).
(Standalone does not actually work perfectly: if I try to drag a reference into a library collection, the first time it works but trying it a second time does not work.)
in Terminal, there are several lines e.g.
JavaScript error: chrome://zotero/content/standalone/standalone.xul, line 1: TypeError: ZoteroPane_Local is undefined
I don't know command line well enough to know what to do in Terminal, nor do I know what permissions I have on this university computer.
I've never even opened Chrome on this laptop.
I was not using Firefox Connector, but five minutes ago I installed it. when I click on the icon, it saves the webpage to the open Standalone.
now I'm in technical territory I don't know. is the Zotero app I download from the university software centre the problem? why the error message 'Software Update Failed' every time? why does there appear (to me) to be 2 apps, one that cannot open and then crashes and one that opens? I took the problem to the university IT help support and they had *no* idea what to do. so I'm posting here.
@ckhotala -- which version of Zotero? Is the download site public & can you point to it or is it campus only?
Jouni - when did your problems start? account password change? or other?
@adamsmith
Zotero 5.0.22.
the download site is not public. I could de-install Zotero and then re-install from Firefox but IT told me not to do that - to only download any app from the university download centre. so far I'm trying to be a good university user. :)
To start, we'd want a Report ID from Zotero, not from the connector.
Generally speaking, we can't help with downloads not from our own site, since we have no idea whether it's our code. But if you want to confirm, you can open Terminal via Spotlight, type "shasum -a 512 " (with a space at the end), drag the DMG file into the Terminal window, and press Return. For 5.0.22, that should show this code:
8b09a81dc5f7c0a4510803b09327c7326f1f37d05a13c547ac5f45c3d0b9c7d1319181f68cd52aea4e0e823670e4bda0bf5714010a085b1d3c8c1a18ed629046(Copy and paste into Find to confirm.)
You shouldn't need admin rights to open Zotero.
Assuming you see the same code as above, just to confirm, you've tried deleting Zotero from Applications and reinstalling? (That message isn't referring to Chrome the browser.)
I fixed the problem by downloading from Zotero directly and reinstalling the app. Now everything works.
Intermediaries just make life more difficult :-)
I was about to do the same thing as @jounikjuntunen did - delete the app and re-install from the website.
yesterday there was a new update of Zotero from our university software centre, which I downloaded and all problems are now fixed. hopefully someone in IT was finally reading my emails.
#resolved!
@dstillman: so the best thing to do is to de-install all of zotero and reinstall it? I'm a little nervous about doing this...
I've also had another problem (probably unrelated, though from the same period - past week and a half...so i can't help wondering...) in which my mac laptop (Sierra 10.13.1) doesn't start up normally, but only after several tries and often a 3-5 min delay.
Would be most grateful for thoughts on any/all of this! Thanks!