Display of subcollection timed out (1378816443)

Chose a 4th level subcollection to which I intended to save source information from Chrome browser, using the Zotero Connector. After choosing the subcollection, Zotero's screen showed only "Loading items..." for many minutes. (Maybe 10 or more.) Meanwhile, the exclamation point notification appeared; clicking on it reveals the error message, "operation timed out."

Eventually -- after reporting the error and beginning this post -- Zotero filled in the subcollection display. (The subcollection had only 4 items, but the first-level parent, "My Library," had 17,374.) I then used the connector, and everything seemed to work as usual.

This behavior is exceptional on this computer. I don't recall ever having it before.

In case the long time delay involves a shortage of memory and swapping to virtual memory, let me explain. I'm using a late-2012 iMac w/ 16 GB of DRAM. Until about two months ago this computer had 32 GB of DRAM but was mysteriously shutting off. In an attempt to fix it, I removed 16 GB of original Apple memory, leaving the current 16GB of Crucial memory.

A short time later, I traced most of the misbehavior to one of several network processes running on a NAS drive on my network. Currently, I'm gradually working on isolating this cause.

But in the meantime, I ordered another 16GB of matching Crucial memory to minimize the possibility of mismatched memory causing problems. The new memory is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and I plan to install it later next week. If the timeout problem was caused by too little memory, doubling the present amount should solve the problem.

If insufficient memory is not the problem, then something else must be causing the problematic, long time to display the subcollection causing the error.
  • It wouldn't be the memory. Is the Zotero data directory on the NAS, or is it on your local disk?

    If you keep seeing this, you should disable all your third-party extensions to see if that helps. If you can still reproduce it, we'd want to see a Debug ID from Zotero for it occurring.
  • Zotero's data directory is on the local disk at ~/Etc/Zotero, where ~ is my home directory (/Users/).

    I use Zotero regularly, so I should notice any repeat performances pretty quickly. This week may be an exception though, as I have various system maintenance and personal tasks to perform. But if the problem persists, I should be able to get back to you by Dec. 21.
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