[NOTE] The solution listed here was quickly superseded by the solution here: https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2021/02/12/another-zotero-backup-update/
The Backstory
Some time ago I wrote about free, versioned Zotero file storage. Basically, this is the best Zotero setup I can imagine. I now have automatic backups to multiple git hosting providers of all my pdfs and notes. I can lose at most one day of work in Zotero and that’s pretty darn comforting.
But, recently I noticed that my git pushes weren’t reliably going through. I thought maybe it had something to do with the warning GitHub kept sending me. Something like:
The size 97.4mb of zotero.sqlite exceeds the GitHub’s recommended maximum of 50mb.
But I didn’t heed that warning, even though it came with the recommendation to use Git LFS (for Large File Storage).
It turns out that, while 50mb is a recommended limit, 100mb is the actual limit. And my Zotero backups basically stopped working. That’s pretty powerful motivation to figure out how to get git-lfs working. Turns out, it was easy.
The Boring, Getting-it-done Story
You could probably afford to backup before doing this, I definitely freaked myself out towards the end of this process given the fact I was rewriting my git history…
1. Install git-lfs (I’m on Arch)
yay -S git-lfs
2. Track zotero.sqlite
Obviously, you have to cd into the Zotero folder to do this (I’m using a relative path here)
git lfs install
git lfs track "zotero.sqlite"
3. Rewrite History
Unfortunately, my assumption that I could just git push was wrong. You still have those old gigantic files in your history. So you’ve gotta migrate:
git lfs migrate import --include="zotero.sqlite"
4. Push
git push
5. Panic
Just kidding. But that is what happened to me. The last (essential) step is to:
git lfs checkout
What Have You Done?
Okay, I haven’t spent much time figuring out how exactly this works but at step 3, my zotero.sqlite file became a file that pointed to an LFS stored file (so suddenly it was 134k plain text). Without running git lfs checkout, Zotero will stop working. Anyway, now it works great again. I think.