1907184 - profile not migrating to snap if profile dir is too large

Status: ASSIGNED

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, defect, P1)

Description

[Heather Ellsworth]

We have seen reports of folks updating their Ubuntu to the latest 24.04 release and then not having access to their profile.

This only happens in cases where the user's profile directory is sufficiently large enough to not be able to copy (because their filesystem doesn't have enough space).

The reason this happens is because Ubuntu 24.04 is the first release that installs the Thunderbird snap, instead of Thunderbird traditionally packaged as a deb and provided in the Ubuntu archive like has been the case. (There is still a Thunderbird deb, but it is a transition package that installs the snap).

When the snap is installed, the install scripts look for an existing ~/.thunderbird profile directory. If one is found and if there is enough space on the filesystem to copy it, then the ~/.thunderbird dir is copied to ~/snap/thunderbird/$SNAP_ID/.thunderbird (the location within the snap where the snap looks for the profile dir) [0]. If however there is an existing ~/.thunerbird dir but not enough space to copy it, then it doesn't get copied and when the user launches Thunderbird, it looks like they need to re-create their profile from scratch.

The flatpak does not seem to have this problem so I looked into what it does to access the profile dir and it bind mounts ~/.thunderbird to ~/.var/app/$FLATPAK_ID/.thunderbird [1]

This could be solved by the snap doing something similar: bind mounting ~/.thunderbird to ~/snap/thunderbird/$SNAP_ID/.thunderbird using a layout. Unfortunately this is not possible because the snap user data is readonly.

Another option would be to simply move ~/.thunderbird to the location within the snap. The problem here is that the original profile directory is at risk of being corrupted and left in a funky state and possibly unrecoverable, if say the user's system crashes while the move is occurring.

[0] https://github.com/ubuntu/thunderbird/blob/stable/thunderbird.launcher
[1] https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/taskcluster/docker/tb-flatpak/repack.sh#169

Comment 1

[Heather Ellsworth]

I've started a discussion with the snap store folks to try and find a solution: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/thunderbird-want-snap-user-common-to-be-rewriteable-instead-of-readonly/40959

Comment 2

[Anthony K]

@heather - I do not believe this to be the case as I migrated to 24.04 yesterday and my /home partition has plenty of space:

$ > df -h /home
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/4tb-home  503G   81G  398G  17% /home

My ~/.thunderbird directory is using up 16GB:

$ > du -hs ~/.thunderbird/
16G	/home/akk/.thunderbird/

Installing Thunderbird either via snap or via apt did not result in my profile being migrated. An attempt to copy the .thunderbird directory from my home folder to ~/snap/thunderbird/common did not help either - see my post below:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/2056434/comments/17

What eventually worked for me was using the tarball from:
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/.

Something else is definitely causing grief to us all...

Comment 3

[Kjeld Flarup]

My ~/snap/thunderbird looks like this

drwxr-xr-x 4 kfc kfc 4096 Sep  2 00:25 507
drwxr-xr-x 5 kfc kfc 4096 Sep  2 00:26 common
lrwxrwxrwx 1 kfc kfc    3 Sep  2 00:25 current -> 507

507 is empty, while a copy of my old .thunderbird lies in common!

This makes the profile load again.

mv ~/snap/thunderbird/common/.thunderbird/ ~/snap/thunderbird/507

Comment 4

[amunizp]

Hi just upgraded to 24.1 and I am looking for a way to get my thunderbird working again.
I tried the following:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1506802/updating-thunderbird-from-apt-to-snap-removed-my-config
but when I go to help>troubleshoot info is hangs and does not progress.

$ thunderbird
Gtk-Message: 12:24:33.251: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
[ImapModuleLoader] Using nsImapService.cpp
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libpci missing
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/aboutMessage.js, line 119: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebProgress.addProgressListener]
Gtk-Message: 12:24:35.758: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
JavaScript warning: resource://gre/modules/Troubleshoot.sys.mjs, line 766: WebGL context was lost.
JavaScript warning: resource://gre/modules/Troubleshoot.sys.mjs, line 766: WebGL context was lost.
Exiting due to channel error.
Killed

when I attempt to go into the account settings it also crashes.

$ thunderbird
Gtk-Message: 12:21:31.952: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
[ImapModuleLoader] Using nsImapService.cpp
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libpci missing
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/aboutMessage.js, line 119: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebProgress.addProgressListener]
Gtk-Message: 12:21:34.376: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/preferences/general.js, line 2080: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIObserverService.removeObserver]
Exiting due to channel error.
Killed

Comment 5

[amunizp]

Hi just upgraded to 24.1 and I am looking for a way to get my thunderbird working again.
I tried the following:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1506802/updating-thunderbird-from-apt-to-snap-removed-my-config
but when I go to help>troubleshoot info is hangs and does not progress.

$ thunderbird
Gtk-Message: 12:24:33.251: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
[ImapModuleLoader] Using nsImapService.cpp
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libpci missing
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/aboutMessage.js, line 119: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebProgress.addProgressListener]
Gtk-Message: 12:24:35.758: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
JavaScript warning: resource://gre/modules/Troubleshoot.sys.mjs, line 766: WebGL context was lost.
JavaScript warning: resource://gre/modules/Troubleshoot.sys.mjs, line 766: WebGL context was lost.
Exiting due to channel error.
Killed

when I attempt to go into the account settings it also crashes.

$ thunderbird
Gtk-Message: 12:21:31.952: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
[ImapModuleLoader] Using nsImapService.cpp
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libpci missing
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/aboutMessage.js, line 119: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebProgress.addProgressListener]
Gtk-Message: 12:21:34.376: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
JavaScript error: chrome://messenger/content/preferences/general.js, line 2080: NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIObserverService.removeObserver]
Exiting due to channel error.
Killed

as a side note I might be going crazy but rightlcicking on gnome-terminal, firefox and thunderbird seems to cause some sort of crash. hopefully unrelated!