Startup problematic on beta for a pretty large DB

Debug ID D548171550 for a complete restart until freeze

I am running 5.0.97-beta.35+a5902fc46 on a 2017 macbook Air sporting MacOS Big Sur Version 11.4. When I start Zotero, it freezes at "Loading items" in my main library (a smaller group library I had been using recently seems to load ok).
I've waited patiently and tried restarting the computer - all to no avail. Any suggestions how I can get this running normally again?
Thanks in advance,
Franziska
  • Forgot to include the Report ID 1328416912
  • (3)(+0000003): Loading all items in My Library

    (3)(+0000002): Loading primaryData for items in My Library

    (4)(+0000003): SELECT O.itemID, O.itemTypeID, O.dateAdded, […]

    (3)(+0018120): Starting full-text content processor

    (3)(+0013985): Submitting debug output
    How long have you let it go? This shows about 30 seconds of loading item data.

    Does this still happen if you disable all third-party extensions?
    [JavaScript Error: "JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 7 column 1 of the JSON data" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/locateManager.js" line: 42}]
    This shouldn't be related, but have you customized lookup engines? It looks like you have an invalid one.
  • Hi, thanks for getting back to me on this.
    I've tried again, having disabled third-party plugins and reset the lookup engines.
    This has ten minutes worth of trying to load my library : D206228282
  • and just in case that helps, here's another from a full restart of the computer: D1829239038
  • (3)(+0000006): Creating items view with id x4hCwPQ9

    (3)(+0000001): Waiting for items to load for library 1

    (3)(+0000002): Loading all items in My Library

    (3)(+0000000): Loading primaryData for items in My Library

    (4)(+0000001): SELECT O.itemID, O.itemTypeID, O.dateAdded, O.dateModified, O.libraryID, O.key, O.version, O.synced, […] WHERE 1 AND O.libraryID=? [1]

    […]

    (3)(+0020619): Starting full-text content processor

    (3)(+0566444): Submitting debug output
    Hmm, that is odd.

    - Was it working previously on this computer? If so, did anything change between then and now?

    - How much memory does this computer have?

    - What's the size of the zotero.sqlite file in your Zotero data directory?

    - If you check your database integrity from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences, does it pass? If so, and then you restart Zotero, does that make a difference?

    - Have you tried leaving it running for longer? Say, an hour? (Obviously shouldn't take more than a few seconds to load, but it'd be good to figure out if it's loading very slowly or not at all.)

    - When it's going, if you open Activity Monitor, what do you see for Zotero's CPU and memory usage?
  • Right, in order:
    - it worked fine on this computer until yesterday. I definitely annotated a pdf in my personal library on Monday evening so it was working then. I can't think of anything significant that has happened since.
    - 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
    - 690 MB
    - the database integrity check does not seem to do anything when I click on the button (it goes pale grey and then nothing more happens).
    - I ran it for at least half an hour like this yesterday and nothing happened, but I will try again for longer now
    - it claims to be using 107% of CPU as well as 270 MB of Real Memory, 7,3 GB of Virtual Memory, 40,6MB of Shared Memory and 176,1MB of Private Memory
  • the database integrity check does not seem to do anything when I click on the button (it goes pale grey and then nothing more happens)
    No, it's running. You just have a very large database, so it will take a while (and will likely be at 100% CPU as long as that's running).
  • @FHeimburger: How long was it taking yesterday?
  • Ok, great. I'll let it all run for a couple of hours and report back then.
    Thanks!
  • Startup used to take a couple of minutes, sometimes longer when running better bibtex. As of yesterday, I can't get my library to load at all (well, within half an hour - I'll see if waiting longer does the trick now).
  • I let it run for a couple of hours to no change. Then I started watching the realtime debugging and it seemed to be going over and over items from an RSS-feed (theses.fr). It's not something I really used and it had over 1000 items in it so I unsubscribed from the feed and now everything is working beautifully again - my library loaded and CPU usage is back to normal.
    This is the debug output for the whole thing, just in case it's useful D332728227
  • OK, yeah, a feed with 1000 items could certainly cause trouble, though we'll see if we can optimize that.

    Is startup still taking >10 minutes in that library? I would expect it would, given that your earlier Debug ID showed at least 10 minutes of loading without any feed processing. Feed processing should also only happen periodically, so I'm a bit surprised to hear that this alone fixed the problem.
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