Description of problem: On my main QA testing machine thunderbird has been misbehaving across several versions, to the extent that email operations have to be conducted on another machine with an old profile. It is essential for thunderbird not to be updated on that machine or I risk losing contact altogether so this machine is frozen at version 78.7.0.1 with an old profile from a backup. On the QA machine claws-mail seems to be working but it has been in use for only a few minutes so it is too early to be sure. The symptoms are: completely blank panels in the gui, no address book (abook.{mab,sqlite,sqlite-wal} are present in the profile directory), no user body text input accepted when trying to compose an email to self, no imail messages available, all local folders disappeared and no access to user account settings (they may no longer exist for all I know). Note that I do not use enigmail or PGP settings. The web interface to Gmail works. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 78.8 and earlier. How reproducible: Always, here, but nobody else has reported anything this severe lately. The variability of these problems tends to destroy one's confidence in tbird. Steps to Reproduce: 1. thunderbird -profilemanager & 2. select profile 3. Start thunderbird
Created attachment 12419 [details] Thunderbird 78.8 Not reproduced on my system and several users on MLO forum/IRC. This reminds me this 2020 summer when such thing occurs. Even with profile manager this does not do the trick? Before testing Thunderbird, have you also applied Firefox updates?
The screenshot says it all. This does look like a problem exclusive to Len. I recall widespread complaint about a certain Firefox/Thunderbird update which lost everyone's profiles & more, but that was long ago now. @Len: are you in a position (saved profile, address book, whatever) to UNinstall Thunderbird, and re-install it from scratch (then replace profiles etc)? Or have you already tried that? Perhaps do it on a machine you do not rely on for TB. Or simply install TB on a spare machine and see whether it works. Then replace one saved componenet at a time.
CC: (none) => lewyssmith
@Lewis: I save profiles fairly frequently and that has allowed me to recover up to now. I have not being doing that so frequently on the test machine but was always able to recover use profilemanager to specify the last working profile but after the latest update in mga8 that is no longer possible. I shall try the step-by-step approach and see what happens. After working on this all day I have to take a break now. Up to now, such experimenting has done no good at all. Some time ago I tried to isolate tbird from my data by installing dovecot and following Peter Winterflood's comprehensive instructions but hit a brick wall at the tbird end. The idea was to let dovecot actually deal with the data but thunderbird refused to cooperate, for reasons I could not fathom. Local Folders was supposed to be a window into the dovecot files as far as I could understand it. By dropping an email into a specified folder it should have appeared under dovecot but nothing was stored. Had to abandon that track - too much pressure from QA.
From Len comment on Thunderbird 78.8 BR: > No, thunderbird is not defective. There is a strong suspicion that the "missing data" may have something to do with attempts earlier on to use dovecot as a backend for thunderbird. Copying 'Local Folders' in an old profile to <current profile directory>/Mail and the corresponding abook.sqlite to the current profile re-establishes the missing data, albeit somewhat out-of-date. > Since nobody else in Mageia has had these problems we have to conclude that this is a non-bug. Len, feel free to reopen this for other forensics.
Resolution: (none) => INVALIDStatus: NEW => RESOLVEDCC: (none) => ouaurelien
Thunderbird still does the wrong thing when a new version is installed. Earlier profiles are still not recognized and a new profile wipes everything. That means the training of SpamAssassin is totally wasted and everything is treated with suspicion again. The last time a new version appeared it even prevented access to account settings (because there was no account set up?). Recovery depended on copying a profile from another PC and using that, but SpamAssassin has to be retrained from scratch. Whatever changes have been made to thunderbird they appear to be deliberate and callous. Definitely user-unfriendly.
(In reply to Len Lawrence from comment #6) > Thunderbird still does the wrong thing when a new version is installed. > Earlier profiles are still not recognized and a new profile wipes > everything. Cannot reproduce. I've carried over my thunderbird profile since 1.0 and never lost something. And if you create a new profile, then surely that profile is empty. Please provide some clear steps to reproduce, I've not seen any similar reports about this.
CC: (none) => doktor5000
That what I am hearing. Nobody else sees this problem. It suddenly started happening, without any action on my part. I never had to worry about Thunderbird, for many years. Something happened to thunderbird last year, some kind of policy change which insisted on a new profile whenever the application was updated. Other people did have problems at that time - there were a lot of complaints but these fizzled out and thunderbird seemed to settle down again. You could reboot with or without closing down and on reboot it would come up with everything intact. Then there was a version change and it started acting up again (for me). It would start up with a new profile, blank of course so I would restart with profilemanager and select the previous profile. That worked, for a time, but eventually even that failed and I resorted to restoring older profiles and choosing those, which meant losing a lot of recently saved emails. Sometimes even the older profiles came up blank - in other words TB was preventing me from seeing the data. I found all of this really confusing, especially as nobody else was complaining. It is also very tedious and time consuming copying the old abooks and local folders to whatever profile works and making sure that I have backups at daily intervals (6GB at a time). It is the main reason I have had to ease back on QA work - run out of energy and the will to live. The point is I did nothing to start this cycle. TB at some point decided that users (me) should not have access to stored data - because it was a security risk? Who knows. This sorry saga has run over six months, getting worse and worse and it is wearing me out. Unfortunately I prefer the TB interface to anything else that is on offer but it offers no migration tools, no simple way to recover data. It is a gui but users (me) have to scrabble about in its innards to get back to square one. I have a weak heart and the first time this happened I nearly had a heart attack. It is doubtful that this account provides anything to help with diagnosis. In a nutshell, when there is a new version of TB installed, if it is restarted there is a good chance that it will present an empty slate, against the user's wishes. IIRCC there was a brief period when TB told users that they should create a new profile but gave them the choice of ignoring that but that morphed to the current state where no choice is given. Memory is hazy about this but I think there was a time when using profilemanager to select a previous profile resulted in the request being ignored, but as said I found the whole thing very confusing.
Further to this, it appears that nobody else is affected so this has become a purely personal issue, so OT as far as Bugzilla is concerned and therefore would be better aired on QA Discuss.
This sounds suspiciously like the current TB behavior that says if you execute an older version of TB after you have run a newer version, it refuses to run unless you create a new profile. I get this because I maintain a single copy of .thunderbird on a central machine and occasionally have to access it from a system running an older version of TB. The solution is to edit the compatibility.ini file in the profile and change the last version used to something wayback. Then TB will update your existing profile and all will be well. I understand why they have this check in there, but the workaround doesn't currently cause any problems.
CC: (none) => ftg
I would create a new user, and set that up using thunderbird. Then compare the directory structures and and profile related settings between what the new user has and what's in your normal thunderbird files. Something happened on that installation that doesn't seem to be happening to others, or at least not frequently. I have no idea what would have triggered it.
CC: (none) => davidwhodgins
Thanks guys. Shall backup the current working profile and follow up both suggestions on the QA workstation.
Tinkered a bit with thunderbird on the QA workstation including switching between mga8 and mga7 and found no problems with thunderbird. However, the version was up-to-date on both systems so further tests shall have to wait for a new version of thunderbird to come along.
some thoughts... have you checked file ownership and permissions on the "failing account data" ?
The profile directories are 700, owned by user. Inside the profile directory ownership is user: sqlite and dat files are 644, other files are 600 and directories are 700 or 755/754.