How to set it up to get only one backup

Bourde
I have set up to only have one backup.

https://snipboard.io/Wt6Hr2.jpg

However, I am getting this:

https://snipboard.io/F8bLAW.jpg

Is this one or two backups?

I understand that zotero.sqlite1.bak is a copy of zotero.sqlite.bak.
How to set it up so I only get one backup (zotero.sqlite.bak and not this plus zotero.sqlite1.bak)?

Thank you.
  • dstillman
    Did you delete zotero.sqlite.1.bak after changing that setting?
  • Bourde
    Thanks, I had. I did a new test by deleting it again, and will post again if it did not work. For the moment it's kept just one bak file only. So good.
  • Bourde
    There it is again: https://snipboard.io/o23QNS.jpg

    I think this is a bug.
    My settings explicitely say number of backups: 1.
    I notice this immediately, because my Dropbox tells me I'm out of space.
  • adamsmith
    You have your Zotero data folder in Dropbox? I'm afraid then all bets are off -- hard to predict what Dropbox sync is going to do to any sort of automated operation and it's explicitly discouraged by Zotero.
  • Bourde
    But My Dropbox is not synced with any other computer. Why would this not work?
    Would Google Drive be a better option?
  • adamsmith
    It's hard to say whether or why it wouldn't work but having another sync app do anything on the database folder is just kind of unpredictable (which wouldn't matter).

    If this is all about not wanting the extra back-up in Dropbox, though, you can just tell DB to ignore zotero.sqlite.1.bak https://help.dropbox.com/sync/ignored-files
  • Bourde
    This is great, thanks. It's also about space on the disk. I could have a cron job to regularly remove it. It's the only solution I can come up with.
  • dstillman
    We don't provide any support for a data directory in cloud storage, even if it's not synced with other devices, but I'd guess that this is just a bug. We'll take a look.
  • Bourde
    It would be great if you could look into it just in case.
  • dstillman
    edited December 3, 2022
    I'm not seeing a bug here. I can't reproduce this with numBackups set to 1, and the code that shifts zotero.sqlite.bak up to the numbered copies only runs if numBackups is greater than 1.

    If you can reproduce this with your data directory out of Dropbox, you can try to produce a Debug ID for zotero.sqlite.1.bak being created, and we can take a look. The backup process will run after 5 minutes of the computer being idle if it's been more than extensions.zotero.backup.interval minutes since the last backup (so you could temporarily set that to 1 and wait 5 minutes).
  • Bourde
    Thanks, I will try and get back at some point.
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