Linux Mint Forums

Thunderbird 68.10.0
Linux Mint MATE 19

This is what happened : One day for reasons I can't image
I could not get hold of my email which is situated on a harddrive which is
mounted manually whenever I need it.

This arrangement has worked with no problem for MANY years !

I made a new profile but I can't get my list of accounts back in the left side of Thunderbird.

So you are saying your email is on a separate drive from Mint? Did you check Caja to make sure that hard drive is showing as mounted? Maybe it disconnected for some reason?

While checking that external hard disk, check the backups of that disk are safe. The problem might be the first symptom of a disk hardware problem.

You can run the dmesg command then plug in the external disk, wait a minute, then run the dmesg command again to see any new mount errors.

You can look for the mounted disk in the file manager. If it is not there, you can look for the hardware in the Disks program.

It has nothing to do with the external disk !

I have been using Thunderbird for many many years without problems.

Suddenly I got this message:
and nothing worked . Thunderbird did not even start !

Anyone ? I read about it and tried some but nothing worked.

The Thunderbird profile.ini is NOT situatted on the external disk .

There are no such things as "stupid" questions.
However if you think the answers are a bit stupid,
then this is the right place for you to post it.

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 16, 2021 7:12 amI made a new profile but I can't get my list of accounts back in the left side of Thunderbird.

When you made this new profile, you were able to get into Thunderbird, correct?

And now you are not able to get into Thunderbird. I wonder if the permissions on the profile.ini file somehow were changed and that is preventing Thunderbird from starting.

Are you noticing any problems with any other applications? or just with Thunderbird?

What permissions does the profile folder for thunderbird have on that other hard drive, and what filesystem is that drive formatted to?

It may be worth seeing the output of with that disk attached and mounted if it's external, which I doubt from your comments, and also Maybe it is simply a permissions problem.

Hi, SMG,

SMG wrote: ⤴Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:44 pmSo you are saying your email is on a separate drive from Mint? Did you check Caja to make sure that hard drive is showing as mounted? Maybe it disconnected for some reason?

Actually this smells as if Vilsen has just started having the same old problems, which had been discussed in this thread before:
Thunderbird inaccessible!

Karl

What smell ?

I did not get a proper solution to the problem !

To start from the beginning: I have been using Linux Mint MATE for
many many years now , EVERY DAY + Thunderbird and I have been
using a rotating harddrive ( WD) connected via SATA to MOBO
BUT not always mounted - only when needed.

Suddenly , with no obvious reason I got this message :

How is that even possible ? I mean the profiles.ini is located in

Path=/home/<user>/.thunderbird

so what happened ??



Reading this also suggests that many other have similar peoblems
but Thunderbird , allthough it has been around for decades many
"helpers" automatically think everybody is using WINDOWS as OS.



This has me stumped. My Thunderbird profile had filled up my primary disk
so I am trying to move it to my secondary data drive.
I've tried every trick that I've found, but have concluded that most advice is too Windows-centric for my situation.

My original profile is on my primary disk at /barry/.thunderbird/luw2i6y9.default/

I copied the entire .thunderbird folder over to my DOCUMENTS folder on a second
drive at: /barry/DOCUMENTS/.thunderbird/luw2i6y9.default/ (or: /dev/sdb1/DOCUMENTS/.thunderbird/luw2i6y9.default/)

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make Thunderbird open
the profile in that location. Deleting the one in the original location didn't work,
changing profiles.ini didn't work, and following steps using thunderbird -ProfileManager didn't work.

I have read, and re-read all of the suggested "help" pages with no success.

What am I missing??


I think that Thunderbird is the best most versatile email-client ever made but I also
think further updates are needed.

You have not answered my question about ownership of your thunderbird profile which I still think may be the problem for you at the moment.

-rw-r--r-- 1 mate18 mate18 630 feb 23 11:40 profiles.ini

and as far as I know it has been like that all the time
back to 2006

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:29 am What smell ?

I did not get a proper solution to the problem !

Why did you create a new thread? You should have either bumped the original thread or posted again in the other thread so it would come to the top of the lists. You have wasted my time and the time of others by not letting us know there had already been some investigation done. We are all volunteers here and budget out time helping others with the rest of our lives. This is apparently the third time you created a thread for the same issue. (The first two threads were merged to prevent cluttering the forum.)

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:29 am To start from the beginning: I have been using Linux Mint MATE for
many many years now , EVERY DAY + Thunderbird and I have been
using a rotating harddrive ( WD) connected via SATA to MOBO
BUT not always mounted - only when needed.

Suddenly , with no obvious reason I got this message :

Skärmavbild vid 2021-01-12 12-29-15.png

Except there was a reason. You indicated everything crashed. That crash is also listed in the profile.ini file you posted in the other thread. And the drive on which you had the emails ended up being renamed because of that crash. That seems to be when the problem started.

Also noting here the drive on which you put the new profile is exFAT format and not EXT4.

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:29 am I copied the entire .thunderbird folder over to my DOCUMENTS folder on a second
drive at: /barry/DOCUMENTS/.thunderbird/luw2i6y9.default/ (or: /dev/sdb1/DOCUMENTS/.thunderbird/luw2i6y9.default/)

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make Thunderbird open
the profile in that location. Deleting the one in the original location didn't work,
changing profiles.ini didn't work, and following steps using thunderbird -ProfileManager didn't work.

You have tried a number of different things. To figure out what to do next, we need to understand your current situation.

Right now how many .thunderbird folders do you have and where are they located?

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:01 am -rw-r--r-- 1 mate18 mate18 630 feb 23 11:40 profiles.ini

Where is this file located? On the separate drive or on the drive with your Mint install?

This information is for Linux Moving Thunderbird Data to a New Computer, so it is not "Windows-centric" advice. It may help give a clue as to what is happening in your current situation since it discusses having moving Thunderbird folders.

Vilsen wrote: ⤴Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:29 am I did not get a proper solution to the problem !

You disappeared from the other thread without answering what you were asked. Why do you open a new thread instead of continuing the other one?

I am not sure it has anything to do with this problem, probably not, but I have had problems with Thunderbird being corrupted a couple of times and I just reinstalled it since I use it in IMAP mode and all emails are kept in the server. Still, it is a pain because I have to enter my contacts again. It may be that Thunderbird has a certain instability.

Is your username mate18?

If not, that is your problem.

Just a thought from an amateur player, as I understand it, thunderbird looks for the profile in your home. Have you tried putting a link there to the new location?

I think :

It may be that Thunderbird has a certain instability.

is the answer.

Strange though : It HAS been working fine for several years now...............

It's downright unappealing to try to help someone who does not even seem to read what others have posted. I, for one, have given up.

When asking for the details of your thunderbird profile we need all the details of the hidden .thunderbird folder in your home, not specifically the profiles.ini file.

You still have not confirmed your username is mate18; if that is not your username then that file and possibly the whole .thunderbird folder does not belong to you as the user logged in.
PLEASE, PLEASE, answer the questions you are asked or we can not help you!

I am truly sorry !

I got severe sick again of this hellish
covid 19 virus.

I will be back when I have recovered.

I do read and I do want to reveal all that you need to know.

I am tired now. have to rest...................

This morning routine kernel update from 5.4.0.71 to 5.4.0.72.Thunderbird stopped working. Couldn't send emails, still recieved them. Got the "couldn't attach do you have permisson error"
Steps I did:

• Removing Thunderbird and re-installing didn't help.
  Removing thunderbird, moving .thunderbird folder, reinstalling thunderbird, moving .thunderbird folder back... didn't work
  Rolling back to 5.4.0.71 didn't work
  Removing thunderbird, downloading latest thunderbird, copying profile to new install... Well finally it was working again. But, I did have to re-install all my add-ons, email accounts, etc.

But, it is working again. Just an hour or so of work so solve that little problem.