Exports end up in wrong session on a terminal server

On a Windows 2012 R2 terminal server, as soon as multiple logged-in users use the Zotero Conector via Firefox, the page ends up in some other user's library when clicked "Save to Zotero". Apparently the connector can't assign to which task it should send the page. The storage location set doesn't matter there.

Example:

User 1 and 2 start Zotero and Firefox. User 1 clicks on "Save to Zotero" in Firefox. The page ends up in user 2's image library.
  • Answered on GitHub:

    Do I understand correctly that this must be set manually for each profile? That is not feasible with several thousand profiles.
  • edited May 20, 2022
    The pref for Zotero is stored in the prefs.js file in the Zotero profile directory, which is functionally just a Firefox profile directory.

    The pref for the Zotero Connector is stored in extension storage (browser.storage.local). I don't know if there's a way to configure that centrally.

    But as noted on the linked page, even if you set user-specific ports for saving, word processor integration still wouldn't work properly. Running Zotero on a terminal server just isn't really something we would recommend.
  • Then Zotero is probably not usable for our university, unfortunately. That is a pity and for me also completely incomprehensible that terminal servers are apparently not wanted.
  • edited May 23, 2022
    It's not about whether terminal servers are "wanted" — we just have limited IPC options available to us when integrating with third-party software. Lots of things that require IPC could be problematic on a shared server.

    Again, you can easily configure the HTTP port for the Zotero Connector on the Zotero app side. Whether you can control browser extension storage externally is really a question for browser makers — there might be some enterprise-specific documentation on that from Google or Mozilla. That wouldn't be a Zotero-specific issue, but we're happy to document how to do that if someone finds a way (via group policy, etc.).

    For word processor integration, we believe the Word plugin should actually work automatically on multi-user systems. Google Docs will use the Zotero Connector HTTP port, so if you can configure the Connector in general then that should work as well. The LibreOffice extension uses a fixed HTTP port that can't currently be configured, so that won't work. I've updated the Multiple Instances page with this info.
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