Sync failure on local data server setup

[Tee]

Hi everybody, 

first of all thanks for your work on what looks to be a great project. Unfortunately I could not get it to run properly yet on a local Debian data server following these instructions and utilizing the supplied source on Github:

<http://git.27o.de/dataserver/about/>

After some tweaking and digging through forum posts I came to the point where everything looks correct, all tests in section "Test the installation" on

<http://git.27o.de/dataserver/about/Installation-Instructions-for-Debian-Wheezy.md>

return the expected results. 

In the following I created a group with two admin users plus some test content trying to sync the entries in between two different client systems. The group appeared automatically on successful user login and I can seemingly sync the entries. No errors are being returned, neither on the uploading nor on the receiving end. Nevertheless the uploaded content on the first client is not being received on the second. If I force a local database reset on the second client restoring all content from the server though the entries finally show up. Uploading futher entries on the second system and resetting the database in the same way on system one will also work and entries will add up. It appears as if all new content is submitted correctly but either system will not recognize any changes in the remote collective database and will therefore not receive anything in result.

Here are the relevant HTTP logs:

Initial sync with one item

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:12 +0200] "POST /sync/updated HTTP/1.1" 200 642

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:12 +0200] "POST /sync/upload?gzip=1 HTTP/1.1" 200 430

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:13 +0200] "GET /groups/1/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 437

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:13 +0200] "GET /users/4/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 437

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:14 +0200] "POST /sync/updated HTTP/1.1" 200 504

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:14 +0200] "GET /users/4/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 299

192.168.10.1 - test3 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:14 +0200] "GET /groups/1/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 299

Sync attempt on second system

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:36 +0200] "POST /sync/updated HTTP/1.1" 200 642

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:36 +0200] "GET /groups/1/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 437

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:41:36 +0200] "GET /users/3/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 437

Sync restoring all data from server (client will ask for restart)

This happens automatically after client restart:

192.168.10.121 - - [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "POST /sync/login HTTP/1.1" 200 5095

192.168.10.121 - - [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "POST /sync/updated HTTP/1.1" 200 1153

192.168.10.121 - - [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "GET /?auth=1 HTTP/1.1" 401 466

This happens after confirmation to reset the local database (pops up after restart and the above traffic):

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "GET /?auth=1 HTTP/1.1" 200 304

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "GET /users/3/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 299

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:45:20 +0200] "GET /groups/1/laststoragesync HTTP/1.1" 404 437

192.168.10.121 - test2 [03/Jul/2017:17:45:25 +0200] "POST /sync/updated HTTP/1.1" 200 503

I have tried the firefox plugin as well as the standalone client. The results are the same. By the way: the same behaviour will occur doing without groups trying to sync a single users database on multiple systems.

Any hints or help are really appreciated. Thanks in advance,

Tee

[Dan Stillman]

(Sorry, sent this directly by mistake. Reposting to the group.)

We don't currently provide any support for custom dataserver
installations, and I don't believe that third-party fork is maintained,
but I'd strongly encourage you to work from the 5.0 dataserver, not the
4.0 version. Syncing is 5.0 is much simpler on the server side, and
Zotero 4.0 won't receive any further updates.

We're working on a Docker-based setup that will make small installations
of the dataserver much easier. No ETA on that, but I wouldn't spend too
much time trying to get the 4.0 syncing to work in the meantime.

[Tee]

(This is also a repost of my direct answer)

Hi Dan,

thanks for the information. Starting off with the local data server installation in the first place it looked to me as if version 5 was still in beta status. It was also pretty hard to find any valuable installation instructions for a local data server scenario, I could not come up with any official documentation at all which is probably by design to sell your cloud product ;) The cloud variant was not an option for our customer in the first place, that is why I went with the nicely documented fork and spent quite some time to get to this point. Looks like we will have to reevaluate the situation.

Greetings,

Tee

[Sebastian Karcher]

FWIW, the reason there is no official documentation for installing
server instances is obviously not so that Zotero can sell its cloud
product -- if that were the case, why release the server code in the
first place and why consider a Docker image going forward. The actual
reasons are a mix of resource constraints, with devs and community
sometimes struggling to keep even end-user documentation up-to-date, and
the fact that until recent changes in 5.0, local sync servers were
always rather awkward as they require patched clients, too.

> (This is also a repost of my direct answer)
>
> Hi Dan,
>

> spe

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "zotero-dev" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to zotero-dev+...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:zotero-dev+...@googlegroups.com>.
> To post to this group, send email to zoter...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:zoter...@googlegroups.com>.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.