Can't access account any more

olivier.cailloux
I have problems syncing and accessing my account. I triggered a reset (from preferences page) one week ago and again three days ago. My local library has thus been emptied, but then the green sync icon says that it is currently syncing... for days. Nothing appears in my local library and no errors seems to pop up.

Also, I can't access my online library page. After logging in, clicking on "My Library" (thus accessing the page http://www.zotero.org/olivier.cailloux/items) shows an empty page (contains no HTML code as far as Firefox "show source code" tells me).

My library contained (as far as I remember) two individual entries in a collection and a shared library of about 6000 entries. I think I tried recently to change the status of the shared library (which I manage) from private to public, or something similar, and it is possible that my problems started occuring at that time. But I am not totally confident about that.

Thanks for any help.
  • dstillman
    You have a very large queued download from 21 minutes ago, meaning you in fact have very many items on the server—which is probably why you're getting a blank page. We'll look into it.
  • olivier.cailloux
    Bump. Still no syncing.
  • olivier.cailloux
    Bump. Still no syncing.
  • fcheslack
    Does the sync icon still indicate that you are not syncing? It looks like at least your metadata went through at some point as I see almost 6k items. There is something going on with your library that is causing the api requests for the list of your collections to take too long and most likely time out on the web server when you try to load your library page. I don't think there has been much testing on libraries as large as yours. We'll see what we can do about this.

    Apologies for the delay in looking into this.
  • olivier.cailloux
    The green icon keeps saying that it is currently syncing, and obtaining data from the server (I translate from French).

    Note that I have had this large library (~ 6k items) for months and it was syncing (about) correctly, until a few weeks ago. I have had a few problems, but never as bad as it is currently. But it was a public, shared library by then.
  • dstillman
    This is due to a combination of your having a collection with nearly all of your items and your having another 6K items in your trash. We can probably speed this up on our end, but just empty your trash and sync and the problem will quite likely go away.
  • olivier.cailloux
    My trash appears empty on my side. I just emptied my trash again but I had done that already previously.
  • dstillman
    Are your syncs completing without error? What does it say for the last sync time when you hover over the sync icon?
  • olivier.cailloux
    Well, I've said it twice already: "the green sync icon says that it is currently syncing... for days. Nothing appears in my local library and no errors seems to pop up. Also, I can't access my online library page. After logging in, clicking on "My Library" (thus accessing the page http://www.zotero.org/olivier.cailloux/items) shows an empty page (contains no HTML code as far as Firefox "show source code" tells me)." and "The green icon keeps saying that it is currently syncing, and obtaining data from the server (I translate from French)."

    Basically I am still in the situation faced at the time of my first post (see here above): my local library appears almost empty (three items total, which I've added in the meantime), while my remote library is supposed to contain plenty of items. No sync ever occurs, whetever I try.

    In fact I wouldn't mind losing all my remote items and start fresh: I can re-import them. But I'd wonder however if it could happen again at a later stage when we will use zotero for real - that would be more of a problem. And even starting fresh I can't do. The syncing seems to be just stuck somewhere.
  • dstillman
    Have you tried simply restarting Firefox?
  • olivier.cailloux
    Certainly. The problem occurs since several weeks and I shut down my computer about once a day. zotero also asks for a restart after a "reset" command in the sync parameters.
  • dstillman
    Restore from Server? That does restart Firefox, but the 6K trashed items are on the server. If you don't need your server data, have you tried Restore to Server?
  • dstillman
    You would want to disable auto-sync, restart Firefox, and do the Restore to Server before doing a normal sync.
  • olivier.cailloux
    I just tried that: disabled auto-sync in the preferences, restarted Firefox. Clicked on reset, restore to server. Then the green icon was available again, I clicked it. Now it is stuck again saying that it is obtaining up-to-date data from the server since 4 hours.

    My local library still contains three items, trash empty, BUT my remote page does load and says that it is empty.
  • olivier.cailloux
    Last news: if I wait long enough, the sync icon is reset to "not yet synchronized". I tried clicking it again this morning, same behavior: it says it is syncing, for a few hours, then goes back to "not yet synchronized" state. My remote page http://www.zotero.org/olivier.cailloux/items still says I have no items.

    My account seems to be really broken. Can you do something, e.g. reset it?
  • dstillman
    My local library still contains three items, trash empty, BUT my remote page does load and says that it is empty.
    Wait, three items? Are you trying to erase your data everywhere? Because that's what you'll do if you really only have three items locally and the upload sync actually goes through. (This is why I said above to do a Restore to Server only if you don't need your server data.)

    But the fact that syncing is still failing for you leads me to believe that you actually have more data locally...?
  • olivier.cailloux
    I don't mind (so much) losing my data, I am currently testing and can re-import the data.

    Indeed I had only three items remaining locally and syncing was not working. But I just made one more test this evening (18h21 UTC), as I had switched into manual sync: it now works! Have you done anything to my account?

    My problem is now solved, but this whole story raises a question. I am testing zotero and we are considering to use it in the long term to manage a database of > 5000 entries for a research community.

    Do you think it is possible / advisable to use zotero to manage such a big collection? Would you recommend against that use? What are the chances that we again have this kind of messy sync problems as I just encountered in the future? Once really using this db, such a sync problem lasting weeks would be a catastrophy. And once in production in case of problem we will not be able to simply delete everything and start fresh as what I finally had to do in this case...

    We would like to have your thoughts (or other users thoughts) about that possible use...
  • dstillman
    we will not be able to simply delete everything and start fresh as what I finally had to do in this case...
    Well, it's not what you had to do. We were attempting to help you with an issue that nobody else was experiencing, and then you opted to erase your server data without having the data locally. That's pretty much all I can say on this issue. Plenty of people use databases larger than yours and sync successfully.
  • olivier.cailloux
    My post was not intended to be a critisism about your reaction to my problem, just a question... The question was raised by e.g. fcheslack saying "I don't think there has been much testing on libraries as large as yours. We'll see what we can do about this."

    As I understand your answer anyway, it seems you are confident that we can use zotero with such a large database, that's good to hear. Thanks for helping.
  • dstillman
    And mine was intended simply as a clarification of what actually happened.

    It's true that we haven't done much testing with databases of 12K items (which yours was due to the items in the trash—it wasn't 6K), but most of your issues were likely caused by the specific arrangement of your items—namely having nearly your entire library in a single collection and another 6K items in the trash—which resulted in bottlenecks we haven't seen before and therefore haven't optimized.
  • olivier.cailloux
    I will pay attention to the trash problem in the future. However we intend to keep indeed all these items in one collection - simply because they are imported from a huge bibtex file and we don't have time to manually sort them into different collections, at least for now. Also we would have problems because the sorting of these references into collections would most probably be non consensual among the different researchers that we intend to share the database with.

    I guess we could simply continue the testings for a while and see what happens?
  • dstillman
    Sorting them manually isn't necessary—you can just delete the collection without affecting the items (unless you really need them together).

    But obviously this is something that should work, so let us know if you continue have problems and we'll see what we can do.
  • olivier.cailloux
    Good to know! Thanks.
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