Zotero not starting on Ubuntu from /opt

After downloading and extracting Zotero-5.0.45_linux-i686.tar.bz2 to my /opt directory, Zotero is not starting:

vboxadmin@devdesktop-default:/opt/zotero/Zotero_linux-i686$ ./zotero
./zotero: line 13: /opt/zotero/Zotero_linux-i686/zotero-bin: No such file or directory
vboxadmin@devdesktop-default:/opt/zotero/Zotero_linux-i686$ ll /opt/zotero/Zotero_linux-i686/zotero-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vboxadmin vboxadmin 167408 Apr 16 21:50 /opt/zotero/Zotero_linux-i686/zotero-bin*

The missing file seems to exist, the entire Zotero directory is owned by the user trying to start and execute permissions are set as follows:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 vboxadmin vboxadmin 545 Apr 16 21:50 zotero*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vboxadmin vboxadmin 167408 Apr 16 21:50 zotero-bin*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vboxadmin vboxadmin 174 Apr 16 21:50 zotero.desktop*
-rwxr-xr-- 1 vboxadmin vboxadmin 7387849 Apr 16 21:50 zotero.jar*

Any help would be appreciated!
  • What Ubuntu version, and what's the output of uname -a? Is this in a VM?
  • Yes, it is a VM running in Oracle VirtualBox 5.1.26 on a Windows 10 host.

    $ uname -a
    Linux devdesktop-default 4.13.0-38-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 14 15:20:44 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

    $ lsb_release -a
    No LSB modules are available.
    Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    Description: Ubuntu 17.10
    Release: 17.10
    Codename: artful
  • That's a 64-bit install. You should use the 64-bit version.
  • I get the same error on Debian. I couldn't find a 64-bit version to download.
  • Uh, seems to be the 64-bit version, it's just the website shows "Linux 32-bit" https://www.zotero.org/download/

    Not sure what the cause is in my case then
    $ uname -m
    > x86_64
  • $ file ./zotero-bin
    > ./zotero-bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.26, BuildID[sha1]=38c988db737cfec89fe5440a39144fc5a0fb26ce, stripped

    Very confusing
  • I got it working. Downloading the installable multiple times revealed

    -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 70892698 Nov 15 13:56 Zotero-6.0.18_linux-i686.tar.bz2
    -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 69200236 Nov 15 14:19 Zotero-6.0.18_linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

    Would be much easier if the page didn't try to be smart and instead let me chose the download I want :-/
  • @gz: I'm not totally sure what you're talking about here.

    For an x86_64 client, the main download button should say "Zotero for Linux" and serve x86_64, with a separate link below for "Linux 32-bit".

    If it detects a 32-bit client, the main download button should say "Zotero 6 for Linux 32-bit", with a separate link below for "Linux 64-bit" below.

    You should always get what it say it's offering, and there shouldn't be any doubt — both the URL and the filename have the architecture in them.

    It looks like it's currently offering 32-bit by default in some situations where it doesn't know what to do, such as aarch64. It should probably default to 64-bit in such situations, but at least for that specific case the build wouldn't work on ARM anyway.

    If you're seeing something different, we'd want to know your browser user agent.
  • @dstillman Thanks a lot for looking into it.
    The link always shows as "Linux 32-bit" for me.
    The user agent: "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.212 Safari/537.36"
  • Is that the link or the main download button? The link should show that in the "Other platforms" section, which is for getting a build that isn't for the computer you're on (or at least what we think you need for the computer you're on).
    The main button should be x86_64 (and is for me with that user agent).
  • Other platforms

    macOS . Windows . Linux 32-bit
  • Right, so those are…other platforms. The large download button above will give you the x86_64 build.
  • Thanks. Looks like I somehow got confused.
Sign In or Register to comment.