why has my standalone zotero become too glitchy to use?

cnewf
I have a late-2011 MacBook Pro with a fairly full 1T hard drive 16 GB RAM running OS 10.12.6; I'm using Firefox 61.0.1 and Zotero 5.0.54. I have a large number of Zotero records in 3 collections. Half the time I launch the application it hangs on Loading Items and never does load them. Other times, when I do get records in one collection, I can't change to another collection and have the items load. I have to close the application and relaunch it, with loading taking 5 minutes if it happens at all. Yes other applications aren't running as fast as they used to--I'm keeping this last of the 17 inch MacBook Pros because I am usually away from my office--but they all still work, except Zotero. I don't know what to do.
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  • bwiernik
    Can you click Help -> Debug logging -> Restart with logging enabled and then submit a Debug log ID for a startup that is slow/doesn’t finish? Please post the log number here.
  • cnewf
    here's the error number from the latest freeze (a request to restart when I moved from one folder to another in the same collection). 718733129
  • bwiernik
    That's not a Debug ID. Please check the instructions I gave or this page carefully:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output

    And submit a Debug ID (it will start with D)
  • cnewf
    from a slow but successful loading of entries at startup: D898640429
    from a slow but successful move from one collection to another (3-4 minutes): D1836645253
    from saving one firefox webpage, moving to a new folder in the same collection (1-2 min to load), saving a second webpage (manual entry of author's name not accepted), to "an error has occurred: please restart Zotero.": D1059186082
  • cnewf
    those are all of my activities from launch to crash
  • dstillman
    User interface ready in 560024 ms
    These times are certainly slower than they should be. How many items (including child items) do you have in all of your libraries?

    One thing you can try is restarting Zotero, letting it load completely, and then checking database integrity in the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences. That will actually additionally rebuild the database, which may improve the performance somewhat.
  • dstillman
    Also check the trash in all of your libraries to make sure you don't have extra items in there.

    But there's clearly a problem here. The 2011 laptop and spinning hard drive are likely a part of it, but something else may be wrong, since you've now reported this a few times and we haven't received many recent reports of this.
  • cnewf
    Collection 3 (Future U) has 10,201 items. The other two collections are probably at least 5000 apiece, so say 20,000 records total. But I can't say for sure because they no longer load. I started the check database integrity, went away for 5 hours, and when I came back the button was greyed out and nothing discernible had happened. My Zotero is now inoperative.
  • dstillman
    edited July 26, 2018
    Any progress since then? Sorry — for a large database, it could indeed take a while, though the database would have to be really quite large (or the computer/disk quite slow) to take many hours. How big is your zotero.sqlite file?
  • cnewf
    zotero.sqlite is 841.2 MB Processor is the 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 and 16 GB memory as I mentioned. It still handles 46,000 iPhotos.
  • dstillman
    And what's the status of the rebuild?
  • cnewf
    the rebuild seemed not to take place. I gave it 5 hours. currently no collection will load.
  • dstillman
    edited July 26, 2018
    Oh, so you force-quit Zotero? It's possible that could've caused damage to the database. On a computer that old with a spinning hard drive, I could see a rebuild of an 840 MB database taking many hours to complete.

    840 MB also seems quite big for that number of items. What are the values for the full-text indexing settings and stats in the Search pane of the Zotero preferences?

    So what happens now when you start Zotero? Can you provide a Debug ID for Zotero startup?
  • cnewf
    Index stats:
    Indexed: 16519
    Partial: 59
    Indexed: 2215
    Words: 496692

    debug IDs in message 6 days ago
  • dstillman
    debug IDs in message 6 days ago
    No, we need a Debug ID for Zotero startup now, as well as an answer to my question of exactly what's happening now when you start Zotero. If no collection will now load, as you say, the Debug ID may show us why.
  • dstillman
    Also we need the values of the full-text indexing settings, not just the stats.
  • cnewf
    Submitted with Debug ID D859873552
  • cnewf
    btw Zotero requested restart several times in the leadup to this, and crashed on the first new attempt to restart with logging enabled
  • dstillman
    edited August 2, 2018
    I really need answers to all the questions I asked.
    as well as an answer to my question of exactly what's happening now when you start Zotero
    Also we need the values of the full-text indexing settings, not just the stats.
  • dstillman
    crashed on the first new attempt to restart with logging enabled
    What do you mean by "crashed"? What happened, exactly?

    If you can provide a Debug ID that shows 1) collections not loading or 2) getting a restart error, that would give us info to debug this further.
  • dstillman
    I'd also still suggest making a backup of your database and then running the DB integrity check sometime when you can leave your computer alone for a while (e.g., overnight). 841 MB is very big, and we'd want to make sure that the database isn't damaged and also potentially shrink it through the optimizations done during that operation.
  • cnewf
    new Zotero error message ("please restart Zotero") - 839063743. This is what I meant by "crashed."

    I don't know what this refers to:
    "Also we need the values of the full-text indexing settings, not just the stats."
  • adamsmith
    Maximum chacters and pages to index per file, right above the stats you provide above.
  • cnewf
    maximum characters to index per file: 500,000
    maximum pages to index per file: 100

    latest failure to load (after 15 minutes) has error report ID 845318017
  • dstillman
    edited August 6, 2018
    Those are Report IDs. I'm afraid we need Debug IDs from Zotero startup (using "Restart with Logging Enabled…" or logging to Terminal) for these particular issues.
  • cnewf
    new Debug ID D1994420119
  • dstillman
    And what is the issue that you're reporting with that Debug ID?
  • dstillman
    It seems to show Zotero starting up successfully, albeit after 42 minutes, which is obviously much longer than it should take, but we still need you to tell us what this is intended to show.

    In any case, my suggestion above still holds.
  • cnewf
    10-20 minutes to load. inability to switch collections with the request to restart. same issues as from the beginning of this thread. often restart with debug prevents it from loading at all, so I was lucky this time.
  • dstillman
    edited August 6, 2018
    I'm asking specifically about that Debug ID. I don't see a request to restart in that output.
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