PDF Indexing freezes Firefox on Karmic

Jon Rubin
Hi - (should I still be using this category, or just move to general Troubleshooting?)

When I try to store a copy of a PDF file, it is completely freezing Firefox. I'm used to a small hang whilst it indexes, but I'm wondering if something might have changed such that it's failing more often?

Firefox 3.6, Zotero 2.01 Ubuntu 9.10
pdftotext version 3.02pl1
pdfinfo version 3.02pl1

I've cut down the number of pages to index to only 5, but no joy - is it worth reducing the default number of characters too?
Shouldn't really be having this problem as my desktop is a dual core machine. Trouble is, that error reporting is difficult when I have to force-quit Firefox after storing a PDF.
Any advice?
Regards,
Jon.
  • lewelma
    Same Problem, same specifications.

    I did NOT have this problem under Zotero 2.0.0. However, the 2.0.1 version appears to have caused a new problem for Ubuntu users.

    Is there a way to get back to 2.0.0 while this is being fixed?

    Matt
  • lewelma
    Actually, I used Jon's observation that it was the "index" that was crashing. I cleared the index (for everything except for the web-links, which would apparently require revisiting the websites), and then rebuilt the index.

    It took a while to complete (which looked like it was crashing - it went all dark - however, I was also running the System Monitor and noted that it was happily chugging along at 99% cpu usage. When it completed, Firefox came "light" again and all was well). Furthermore, when I added a new PDF, it was index automatically, with no crashing of Firefox. I'm guessing that 2.0.1 tweaked the indexing in some way, and a fresh index was required.

    Either way -- All better now!

    Matt
  • dstillman
    I did NOT have this problem under Zotero 2.0.0. However, the 2.0.1 version appears to have caused a new problem for Ubuntu users.
    Changes in 2.0.1 were minimal, and there were no changes related to indexing, so it's quite unlikely that 2.0.1 caused this.
  • dstillman
    There's a known issue (discussed in various threads) in which pdfinfo can intermittently hang during indexing—there's a good chance that that's what you guys are seeing, but real-time debug output during indexing that produced a hang would be the only way to know for sure. The workaround for that problem is to delete the pdfinfo binary until we figure out what's causing it.
  • Jon Rubin
    Hi Dan, well now of course everything is working just fine (including a file that was simply refusing to work yesterday) - clearly the way to clear up all problems is for you to ask for debug output! If it starts again, I'll try to get the debug output.
  • dstillman
    I wasn't really asking for it—just noting that, if you generated real-time debug output and reproduced a hang, the last line you saw would likely be about pdfinfo.

    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4935/crash-when-attaching-document/#Item_18
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