thunderbird on different computers (one FreeBSD, the other Gentoo)

[tOsYZYny]

I have a script I use to backup my thunderbird configuration and the script works fine such that I can backup and restore my thunderbird configuration to that machine, but if try to restore one to the other, it isn't happy.

I pinpointed it down to the different profile, on FreeBSD, my profile is at:

default-release

But , on Gentoo, it is:

default-esr

The rest is pretty much identical, they both follow the same pattern for

[Installation ... ]
Default=<path to profile>
Locked=1

Path=

Why does the Gentoo version need the profile name to be default-esr while the FreeBSD one needs default-release? Is that configured during compilation? If so, then perhaps all I really need to do is run these 2 files through sed and call it a day. If FreeBSD, ensure the profile path is default-release, and Gentoo, default-esr.

FreeBSD thunderbird is 128.7.1 and Gentoo is 128.7.0, hardly the culprit.

The only thing that looks remotely related is MOZ_ESR in the ebuild, but I don't see a release string in the FreeBSD Makefile.

Also, merely renaming the profile:

gsed -i 's/default-*/default-release/g' installs.ini profiles.ini default-esr/prefs.js default-esr/pkcs11.txt && mv default-esr default-release

does not work.

But, if I instead, change the random bits in front of that too, it does (even if I don't update prefs.js which has a path in it to the old profile). Therefore, it seems to me that the random bits in front of the profile name may not be entirely random.

The advantage with my approach to backups is that it takes very little space to backup my thunderbird configuration.

I'd like to essentially have a single configuration across my machines and then whenever I restore it to either machine, the restoration process will handle that 'translation'.

 

[drsnx60]

Hi I have moved the $HOME/.thunderbird directory between FreeBSD machines , without any issues between 14.2 and 15-current systems
you can do that as long as the directory does not exist on the target Userdir / machine.
If a thunderbird account t is created , and you then dump the backup from another USER or other machine on top of the $HOME/.thunderbird
directory its doubtful whether you get a clean user profile installed.

 

[tOsYZYny]

Ok, I'm talking about Gentoo and FreeBSD. I suspect that there might be a subtlety that is causing the profile to not be picked up from FreeBSD to Gentoo and vice versa. This is essentially what my backup looks like:

_PLUGIN_CONFIGURATION_PATH=~/.thunderbird
_PLUGIN_CONFIGURATION_PATH_IS_DIR=1

_PLUGIN_EXCLUDE="calendar-data datareporting Mail security_state settings storage .parentlock abook* formhistory.sqlite lock global-messages-db.sqlite"
_PLUGIN_INCLUDE="installs.ini profiles.ini"

_THUNDERBIRD_PROFILE_FILES="containers.json \
encrypted-openpgp-passphrase.txt extension-preferences.json extensions.json \
key4.db logins.json mailViews.dat openpgp.sqlite permissions.sqlite pkcs11.txt \
prefs.js session.json sessionCheckpoints.json SiteSecurityServiceState.txt \
xulstore.json"

This keeps the size of the backup as small as possible. It works locally, but cross platform, it runs into issues with Gentoo looking for an esr profile name and FreeBSD looking for a release profile name.

The above configuration drives a tar command including and excluding files ...