Thunderbird does not take new mails [SOLVED]

[52ROSt]

LM17.3KDE
Thunderbird 45.7.0

Until I used last night the "mintBackup Tool" everything was running fine.
This morning I
- Got the message that my Dropbox lost the link and after starting
- Cannot access none of my external HDD for backups
- Thunderbird shows at start up and at download of emails the message:

Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox.

This is the most urgent problem and I ask for your kind help

I checked:
Dolphin shows 150GB unused space on the HDD, which is reasonable value.

Permissions of /.thunderbird:
Access Permission:
Owner: Can View & Modify Content
Group: Forbidden
Others: Forbidden
Ownership:
-Owner = my name
-Group = my name
All folders beneath have the same permissions.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Problems observed in Thunderbird:
- Cannot receive mails
- Cannot open attachments

What can I do?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[kc1di]

can you restore the back up files?
if you can replace the .thunderbird file with the old one you had it may clear the problem in TB for you.
if not save /export your emails and delete the .thunderbird file and resetup thunderbird.

[Cosmo.]

What exactly did you do with the backup tool? A backup or a restore? And for what: For the data or for installed programs?

[52ROSt]

I solved the Thunderbird problem by restoring an image of the entire HDD taken a few days earlier.
I also moved the profile folder, which gave me all the mails back.
To save TB and FF profiles and a few new files I could identify, i saved the same way; for this I used a portable LM machine.
At the end I used FreeFileSync to check each folder of /home/user and made corrections. Thus, in a few hours after decision to restore the image I was back to normal again.

I only can recommend to make images of the entire hard disk in defined intervals and additionally create backups of /home/user on a daily basis.During the installation and fine tuning of the machine daily or bi-daily images are recommended. Later the intervals can be made longer. First weekly than monthly than quarterly. Keeping the last 2 images can be considered as sufficient.

Image was created and restored using Clonezilla. Simple tool and good.

I wrote this for any other newbie who runs into the same problem.


As for the mintBackUp Tool, I created a back up of /home/user (entire directory with hidden and not hidden files) not a restore.
As soon as I have a bit of time (this could easily be a few weeks), I will do some testing:
1 - Test the tool in a copy of an virtual machine (same LM version as the the real machine)
2 - Test the tool in the normal machine immediately after creating an image.
Thereafter I will write a note here.

[Cosmo.]

I only can recommend to make images of the entire hard disk in defined intervals and additionally create backups of /home/user on a daily basis.

That is, what I tell since years and I also wrote on a number of places, that not backed up data is superfluous data.
I recommend Back in Time for that purpose. It can be set to work fully automated, not even a single click is needed to have a current backup.

[52ROSt]

@Cosmo

Thanks for mentioning BackInTime.

I had a look at the synapatic package manager. 2 packages are needed: backintime-common and backintime-KDE (because I use the KDE version of LM). Short description sounds very good. I will have a look at it.

Is there somewhere a manual? Expected something in KDE format but it does not look like typical KDE application with a Help link.

Do you have some special recommendations?

[Cosmo.]

Read the German Ubuntu wiki about Back In Time. There is also a FAQ on the BiT site. For further questions don't hesitate to ask here; I will try to help.

[52ROSt]

@Cosmo. Thanks for the informtation. i will do so.