Zotero doesn't fully start

dstillman
edited June 18, 2019
This discussion was created from comments split from: Zotero doesn't work anymore with Mac after the latest update.
  • upena
    Have a similar problem after updating Zotero to 5.0.67.3 on Mac.

    Zotero doesn't anymore fully starts: Doesn't show data for the most attemps to start it. If it does show data, I can't open the attached PDF or change anything. Thereafter it stops responding totally.

    I urgently need an older still functioning version of Zotero. Could someone please provide any link to older versions.
  • dstillman
    That wouldn't be a similar problem — the other issue was a specific bug when citing in Word 2011 that's fixed in 5.0.67.3.

    What exactly happens when you start it? What do you mean by "doesn't show data"? What happens when you try to change something? Can you provide a Debug ID for Zotero startup, using the "Restart with Logging Enabled…" option?
  • upena
    Thanks for clarifying. I meant with "similar" not the problem but that the problems occured after updating Zotero.

    Debug ID: D2061125317

    When first starting the "content field" (papers in the database) just showed "loading ... (Lade Einträge)". After waiting for more than half an hour restarting Zotero showed finally the content. But when trying to change an items property the program freezes again. Changing to another collection shows "loading ... (Lade Einträge)" endlessly.
  • dstillman
    That's not a Debug ID for Zotero startup. Can you try the steps again?
  • upena
    That's what I was trying to do. But Zotero didn't restart so I manually started it.

    Here now hopefully an correct Debug ID: D617161440
  • dstillman
    edited June 19, 2019
    User interface ready in 1002340 ms
    OK, so that shows Zotero starting up in ~17 minutes.

    Are you saying that's changed since a recent update? That's slow, of course, but it doesn't look like it would have anything to do with any recent updates (as in, anything in the last couple years), just with your having a lot of items in your library. How many items do you have?
  • upena
    I restart Zotero and it showed this time:

    : User interface ready in 887238 ms

    That's a bit faster but still nearly 15 minutes.

    I didn't take such long lately. Also I didn't mesure it I would say before the update it took clearly less than 10 minutes. Actually I felt starting speed improved during the last years.

    Over the last 10 years all-in-all ~270000 items are populating the database.

    Yesterday the problem was that even the item titles showed up I could anymore work with Zotero. Opening an PDF didn't seem to work but after may be one hour or more suddenly the PDF popped open.

    Today I saw that one item was marked as "retracted". Maybe Zotero became unresponsive because it was searching through the whole database for retracted Papers which certainly took some time?

    Now things seem to work again normal!

    Is it possible to split the database and work with several database on one system (Mac)? Like having different database for different topics or one for journals and another for news clippings?
  • dstillman
    It's likely just the addition of more items to your database or other things going on on your computer. The startup process hasn't changed, and the delays you're seeing in that debug output are just from loading in data.
    Maybe Zotero became unresponsive because it was searching through the whole database for retracted Papers which certainly took some time?
    It's not impossible, though that wasn't the issue in the debug output you provided. If you want to help us test this, you can go to the Config Editor in the Advanced pane of the preferences, disable extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled, and generate a Debug ID for toggling it back on and waiting for the retracted item to be detected (if you didn't delete it yet).

    In any case, we're hoping to speed things up for extremely large databases like yours with some architectural changes down the line. In the meantime, if you see further slowdowns during usage, we'd want to see Debug IDs for specific operations that are slow.
  • dstillman
    Is it possible to split the database and work with several database on one system (Mac)?
    It's possible. See Multiple Profiles.
  • upena
    Debug ID with disabled "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" (false): D276401548

    When I set "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" back to true, Zotero straightforward showed the retracted papers again: without restarting.

    Debug ID with enabled "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" (true): D903639674
  • dstillman
    When I set "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" back to true, Zotero straightforward showed the retracted papers again: without restarting.
    Right, so if you didn't see a delay there, it's not related to the retraction detection.
  • upena
    Just out of curiosity I set the flag of "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" back to "false", restarted Zotero and set again the flag to "true": it took a bit more than 2 minutes for Zotero to show the retracted papers and becoming resposive again.

    Seems reasonable to me.
  • upena
    Thanks for the link to Multiple Profiles! That's helpfull.
  • dstillman
    it took a bit more than 2 minutes for Zotero to show the retracted papers and becoming resposive again
    Can we see a Debug ID for that? Make sure other operations (startup, sync) have finished before starting the logging.
  • upena
    1. Restarted Zotero with "extensions.zotero.retractions.enabled" set to "false"
    2. Activated logging
    3. Changed value to "true"
    4. After papers appeared sent Debug ID D851862832

  • dstillman
    Are you saying that stalled at some point? It looks like it took about a second, and then you switched to the Retracted Items view about a minute later.
  • dstillman
    edited June 21, 2019
    It looks like it took about a second
    Sorry, actually about 10 seconds.
  • upena
    Yes, Zotero frezzes for some time after changing to "true". Once I couldn't even close the editor window. This time it seemed to go faster as before when I measured 2 minutes until it showed the retracted papers.

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