Uploaded data not well formed error

amwdew
Hi, I have worked with Zotero now for several years, but have suddenly encountered a new error when trying to sync. "Uploaded data not well-formed." Report ID: ad2d366854

I am not sure what to do. Need for this to sync as my son is trying to do a school project with part of the data.

One factor possibly involved is that my database does contain a large volume of materials imported from Procite, which did not import entirely correctly and may contain erroneous data. But this stuff has been sitting in the database for a couple of months; not sure why the sudden problem.

Using Mac OS X, Firefox 4.01. Zotero 2.1.6.
  • amwdew
    Oh, and after I hit "report error" the Report ID in that is: 603219583
  • dstillman
    edited May 23, 2011
    Every now and then we see some weird errors like this in the uploaded data, due, I believe, to Firefox bugs. Restart Firefox and/or your computer and try again.
  • amwdew
    Hi Dan,
    Unfortunately, I did reboot both the computer and Firefox, tried again, and got the same error. Report ID this time is: 1670634361. Not sure what to do!
    Thanks!
  • dstillman
    There are no error messages in that error report. Restart Firefox and provide another.
  • amwdew
    Ok, will start it up now and report back.
  • amwdew
    Ok, I have now restarted Firefox twice and tried to sync; both times, I have had basically an unending (12hr-plus) message of "getting updated data from sync server." This morning, I deleted all the problematic ProCite imported material from the database, thinking that might ease the sync, but I had this same (getting updated data) message for over an hour with the Mac spinning beach ball and Firefox appearing hung ("application not responding"). Now, at last (due to what change I don't know), the beach ball is gone, and the sync arrow is turning ("uploading data to sync server" initially appeared and then, again, "getting updated data from sync server"). But this "getting updated data" message has been going on now for more than half an hour and it still is not completed, nor are my newly added items from this computer visible on another computer also supposedly syncing. I am super frustrated as I have had repeated problems with syncing with Zotero.
  • dstillman
    Deleting large amounts of data isn't really the right way to go about troubleshooting this—that generally just makes things worse.

    Try now, though.
  • amwdew
    I have left my home computer running all day with Firefox and Zotero open,so I assume it must still be trying to sync (it's set on "sync automatically"), but I guess it still has not, because when I open my office computer and Zotero, none of the changes (large or small) that I have made at home show up. Will provide an update when I return home this evening as to any error messages that may have appeared. Thanks.
  • dstillman
    On the server, I'm seeing an error from 20 minutes ago indicating that a first name in one of your items is too long and needs to be shortened (which generally also indicates a problem with a site translator, since such names shouldn't be saved). Not sure why that error wasn't retrieved by your client, though.
  • amwdew
    I'll check at home. I think I have received this error in the past and thought that the item generating it was one of the things imported from Procite, which I have now, I thought, deleted from the home database.
  • adamsmith
    make sure you empty your trash after deleting items.
  • amwdew
    Ah, so simple, will do that and report back!
  • dstillman
    Again, though, if you actually want those items, you shouldn't delete them. You can restore them from the trash and fix the items with too-long names.
  • amwdew
    Thanks, no, I won't need those items. The import from Procite was kind of a mess (fields did not map properly), so I am planning to re-do that by exporting from Procite smaller batches of "like" items so as to be able to clean them up before importing to Zotero. So I won't be needing this particular set of deleted materials. Nice to have the warning, though!
  • amwdew
    Ok, I emptied the trash and then tried again with the sync from home. ReportID: 935616962. Error said "empty response from server." ???
  • dstillman
    Just try again.
  • amwdew
    Zotero has been open all night, but I awake this morning to find the spinning green arrow and "uploading data to sync server." If I go via the web to the particular "group library" I am at the moment concerned with ("Evan Whisnant"), it contains no items.
  • amwdew
    Tried syncing again this morning. Error again. Report ID: 1728612089 "empty response from server." I desperately need to get this solved.
  • amwdew
    New detail. Just tried syncing again; whole process took about 30-40 min; most of the time the Mac "beach ball" was spinning. When it completed, I got the same "empty response" error (Report ID for this one:24374372). However, it does appear that the syncing process is pulling DOWN to my home machine changes I made yesterday on a different machine (office) to a different "group library." So it appears, perhaps, that the problem may have something to do with uploading new materials I added on THIS machine (the Mac) to various of my libraries, including most importantly at the moment the "Evan Whisnant" group. Maybe this detail will help us troubleshoot?
  • dstillman
    You have nothing queued on the server right now. If it's spinning, restart Firefox and try again, and post here when you do.
  • amwdew
    Ok, latest update. First, I discovered that I had not, in fact, previously emptied the *Zotero* trash, but had only emptied the main iMac trash. Did not realize Zotero had its own trash. So I emptied that, which got rid of all of that problematic old imported data for good, I do believe. I re-ran the sync again twice: first time got the "empty response from server" error again, and then ran the sync again -- now we are back to the original error for this thread, which says "Uploaded data not well-formed." Report ID generated when I click "report error" is 1589010909. [The error message itself, that drops down from the top of the page when I click the red exclamation point, has a different Report ID: 51d3ee56a7]. What next?
  • amwdew
    Oh, and one other new detail: This time around, the "Evan Whisnant" collection DID upload and is now visible both via the web and on another user's computer that is a member of that particular "group." So that is an improvement!
  • dstillman
    So presumably there's no more problem?
  • amwdew
    Hey, I think I've now solved it! With some persistence and further cleanup on my Mac (emptying the true Zotero trash, and clearing out a few other old things), the sync now appears to be working perfectly and my changes to all of my group libraries are showing up on my colleague's machine. Assuming all also show up next week on my office machine, I am good to go. I am honestly not sure how I fixed this except the major difference seemed to be emptying the right trash, which I'm not sure had *ever* been emptied previously. Thanks for staying with me and happy Memorial Day.
  • adamsmith
    I think this was probably the first name that was too long and remained in the Zotero trash, so that it was never fully deleted - we should probably highlight this more in troubleshooting instructions.
  • dstillman
    That was surely part of it, but the "Empty response from server" errors were likely due to what seems to be an incompatibility between Firefox and an upstream load balancer on the server side. The load balancer times out requests longer than 60 seconds, but Firefox doesn't register this, so if there's a very large upload that for some reason takes over a minute to be placed into the upload queue, the Zotero sync icon could keep spinning for days until Firefox realizes and Zotero returns the "Empty response" message.

    We'll see what we can do about this, but it should only be an issue for very large upload syncs.
  • amwdew
    I'm not sure I understand entirely the things you are saying on your end, but things seem to be straightened out for now on mine -- thanks y'all, and enjoy your holiday.
    Anne
  • MerGrung
    Hi, I had an error like this today, trying to sync my library for the first time in a year. the error code was 1274502109. It seems that the sync process is still going on.
  • dstillman
    meretegr: Start a new thread.
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