Local directory not moved with profile
Categories
(Thunderbird :: General, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: ossman, Unassigned)
References
(Blocks 1 open bug)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:77.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/77.0
Steps to reproduce:
- Move my existing profile to a new location
- Start thunderbird
Actual results:
Account is broken where no folders can be shown. The error console shows problem accessing the old profile path.
Expected results:
Account should have continued working fine.
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Reporter | |
Comment 1•4 years ago
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I suspect this is a design defect rather than an implementation bug. It seems the local directory gets its absolute path stored in the profile, so moving the profile keeps references to the old profile.
IMHO the local directory setting is an advanced feature that should be left for special cases. By default it should use a directory relative to the profile directory so that things stay consistent even if things are moved around.
See also bug 1412609 which is technically about the same thing, but it doesn't seem to have a clear focus on the use case.
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Reporter | |
Comment 2•4 years ago
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Also note bug 1651640 which prevents a user from manually fixing the issue.
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Updated•4 years ago
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You say in bug 1651640 that your mail is actually in the default path of ImapMail inside your profile. So what difference would it make if the Local directory setting is hidden or not when you didn't actually use it?
And if your Local directory target is inside your profile, then how was it not moved with the profile? Yes, maybe the pointers to it may now not be valid on the new machine, but that is a different matter.
Can you check in the profile in the prefs.js file where the mail.server.serverX.directory and mail.server.serverX.directory-rel preferences actually point to?
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Reporter | |
Comment 4•2 years ago
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(In reply to :aceman from comment #3)
You say in bug 1651640 that your mail is actually in the default path of ImapMail inside your profile. So what difference would it make if the Local directory setting is hidden or not when you didn't actually use it?
And if your Local directory target is inside your profile, then how was it not moved with the profile? Yes, maybe the pointers to it may now not be valid on the new machine, but that is a different matter.
Right. My initial description was probably a bit incorrect. The problem is indeed that pointers to the local directory break when the profile is moved.
Can you check in the profile in the prefs.js file where the mail.server.serverX.directory and mail.server.serverX.directory-rel preferences actually point to?
I've since upgraded Thunderbird several times, so I'm afraid I have no way of getting those values at the time the bug happened. I have not tried to reproduce the issue in the current version of Thunderbird.
In my current profile, I can see that .directory gives an absolute path, and .directory-rel seems to have a safer profile relative path. I'm not certain why both are needed, though? But perhaps moving the profile around with a current version of thunderbird will work better.
Description
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