1678939 - Multiple Address Books Emptied on Upgrade to TB 78.

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[Upgeya Pew]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:83.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/83.0

Steps to reproduce:

Allowed the upgrade to TB 78

Actual results:

Since there have been multiple updates in the last few days, I'm not sure at what sublevel the problem occurred, or exactly when - but probably in the last week or two. I'm now at 78.4.3.

On the upgrade, most of my 20 or so address books have been emptied. The only ones that remain populated are those with a "list" in them, and the Personal Address Book, and an address book called "Collected Addresses", which is specified on the Options->Composition property sheet under "Addressing" as the place to automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses.

How do I restore the addresses in my empty address books?

Expected results:

Address books should not have been emptied.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Geoff, any clues?

Comment 2

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Your address books went through an upgrade process the first time you opened Thunderbird 78. Obviously this has gone wrong somewhere. There should be backup files in your profile folder, so you can try to do the upgrade again. I'd suggest doing just one initially so you can see if it's working or not.

Here's the steps to do:

• In Thunderbird's config editor find the entries for a particular book, they'll be named ldap_2.servers.something.…. Change the one named dirType from 101 to 2. Change the one named filename from something.sqlite to something.mab.
• Close Thunderbird.
• In your profile folder delete something.sqlite and rename something.mab.bak to something.mab.
• Open Thunderbird and see if it worked. If not, open the Error Console (under Tools, Developer Tools on the menu) and see what's written there. Copy and paste it here as it may help us figure out what's happened.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter, what are your results?

Comment 4

[marcolopespt]

I have at least one address book emptied also.

Reconverting did not resolve anything (tried it 3 times with backups)

Comment 5

[Upgeya Pew]

Folks, I'm in the process of getting you the info you'd like. It's a little bit more complicated, because I'd already restored my address books by using an older version of TB on a different computer (using the newer, up to date .mab files still sitting on the new version, TB 78) to export the .mab address books (into .csv format), then importing the .csv files into new address books on the new version of TB. So to get you the info you'd like, that means temporary restoring a backup copy of TB 78 (following the TB 78.4.3 upgrade) and performing the tasks you've listed. Please be a little patient.

Comment 6

[marcolopespt]

(In reply to Upgeya Pew from comment #5)

Folks, I'm in the process of getting you the info you'd like. It's a little bit more complicated, because I'd already restored my address books by using an older version of TB on a different computer (using the newer, up to date .mab files still sitting on the new version, TB 78) to export the .mab address books (into .csv format), then importing the .csv files into new address books on the new version of TB. So to get you the info you'd like, that means temporary restoring a backup copy of TB 78 (following the TB 78.4.3 upgrade) and performing the tasks you've listed. Please be a little patient.

That's exactly what i did...

Just remember that the MAIL RULES will need to be checked one by one, because the lack of the address books will MESS them up!!!

Comment 7

[Upgeya Pew]

(In reply to Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan) from comment #2)

Your address books went through an upgrade process the first time you opened Thunderbird 78. Obviously this has gone wrong somewhere. There should be backup files in your profile folder, so you can try to do the upgrade again. I'd suggest doing just one initially so you can see if it's working or not.

Here's the steps to do:

• In Thunderbird's config editor find the entries for a particular book, they'll be named ldap_2.servers.something.…. Change the one named dirType from 101 to 2. Change the one named filename from something.sqlite to something.mab.
• Close Thunderbird.
• In your profile folder delete something.sqlite and rename something.mab.bak to something.mab.
• Open Thunderbird and see if it worked. If not, open the Error Console (under Tools, Developer Tools on the menu) and see what's written there. Copy and paste it here as it may help us figure out what's happened.

---

I restored the backup copy of TB I'd made after I noticed the address book problem.
I made the modifications to the config for one address book, abook-15.
NOTE, there was NO abook-15.mab.bak, but there was already an abook-15.mab
The abook-15.sqlite file was deleted. Note, it was 320kb large.
Note, interestingly, the only ….mab.bak files that exist in the folder (besides the primary address book and the history) were abook-6.mab.bak and impab-5.mab.bak. Looking at the ldap_2.server… entries for abook-6.mab… and impab-5.mab…, I see that that these are the ONLY address books that were successfully converted during the original upgrade.

After downing and re-starting TB, a new abook-15.mab.bak has appeared, and the address book looks good! The address book contains 3 lists, so the presence of lists in the converted address books no longer appears to be a determining factor in success/failure of the original upgrade.
Note the size of the abook-15.sqlite file is 32kb, unlike most of the uncoverted address book sqlite files, which are 320kb.

I’ve also gone through the procedure of modifying the config entries of another address book, impab-18, but failed to delete the .sqlite file before re-opening TB. That failed to convert the address book. But as soon as I deleted the .sqlite file and re-opened TB, the address book conversion worked. The new impab-18.sqlite file is 32kb large.