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View Full Version : [SOLVED] Moving to new machine /home problems



Mylorharbour
November 30th, 2009, 03:53 AM
We have a netbook running Hardy but are trying to move to another running a newly installed Karmic Netbook Reloaded OS with Thunderbird installed. We used Simple Backup to backup /home on the old machine and Simple Backup Restore to restore it to /home on the new machine. Both installations have the same solitary user account name.

The problem is that although the ~/home/username/.mozilla-thunderbird folder is overwritten by the backup, complete with the old emails presumably, Thunderbird doesn't show them at startup. It just wants us to set up a new email account. Firefox doesn't read the old bookmarks either (from the .mozilla folder). What else do I need to do?

oldfred
November 30th, 2009, 06:25 AM
You need to open thunderbird first to create an initial profile.ini and profile default. Then edit these to your new files.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_a_profile_between_Windows_and_Linux
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Profiles

You may be able to use the newer profile manager.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager#Linux



(Firefox) ./firefox -profilemanager
(Mozilla Suite) ./mozilla -profilemanager
(SeaMonkey) ./seamonkey -profilemanager
(Thunderbird) ./thunderbird -profilemanager

Mylorharbour
December 2nd, 2009, 01:42 AM
Thanks oldfred, I got there in the end.

For anyone else having this problem restore /home to your new /home area/partition, open TB, set an email address, close TB. This will create a profile folder in the /.mozilla-thunderbird folder (xxxxxx.default). This is referenced in the path= line in the profile.ini file. Edit this path= line to point to the restored profile folder, save, close. Open TB and your emails should miraculously appear.

The procedure is also very similar for Firefox bookmarks & cookies. These profiles are in the /.mozilla folder.

SaintDanBert
January 8th, 2010, 04:38 AM
Thanks oldfred, I got there in the end.

For anyone else having this problem restore /home to your new /home area/partition, open TB, set an email address, close TB. This will create a profile folder in the /.mozilla-thunderbird folder (xxxxxx.default). This is referenced in the path= line in the profile.ini file. Edit this path= line to point to the restored profile folder, save, close. Open TB and your emails should miraculously appear.

The procedure is also very similar for Firefox bookmarks & cookies. These profiles are in the /.mozilla folder.

Begin_Cranky

WHY IS ALL OF THIS SO MUCH MAGIC -- BLACK, WHITE or OTHER?

We all move between machines or move to larger hard drives or similar?!

We all religiously backup our $HOME tree and need to restore things??!!

Why doesn't software (1) notice that the restored profile is different some how, and (2) give the end-user the opportunity to integrate the old with the new?

While I'm at it: Why don't we have /home/.mozilla/ and then the separate applications ../firefox ../thunderbird ...?

End_Cranky

~~~ 0;-Dan