373779 - alternate profile location

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Gregory Stec]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; pl-PL; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1
Build Identifier: 

There will be good idea give customers simple way to change/move/copy profile location, including mail boxes, to deferent place - other catalogue/drive/network location. The personal catalogue in Documents and settings is one of more dangerous place in MS Windows file system. This catalogue is usually disaster in the case of system crash. This catalogue is automatically re-created by system with lose of customer data. MS do not trust this please and give its customers ability to simple change location for documents and mailbox location. We need this same.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Mark, strikes me as wontfix. what do you think?

Gregory, see
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Roaming_profile

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

I was just suggesting a WFM resolution when typing in my comment when it collided with your post, but here some additional points:

The Profile Manager provides a "Choose Folder..." button for new profiles.

The local mail location can be switched in the Account Settings, thus only
leaving the managing preferences in the profile. This should be easy to find.

As for keeping anything in the %APPDATA%, it would be necessary to have some
fixed point where to look up any redirecting information, thus profiles.ini may
be the only file at this location.

A system crash may affect any location currently in use, and the user is
responsible for maintaining backups, not just for Mozilla applications.
Thus, this argument is not entirely applicable.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

The app and not the installer manages profiles... back to general.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

That probably belongs into Toolkit, Startup and Profile System component.

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I think there are reasonable ways to set up a profile with a profile location.

I very much doubt that Documents and Settings is as volatile as the reporter suggestions, otherwise we'd have a lot more complaints.

I think this is probably a WFM/Wontfix, as there is already method of doing it (profile manager), and most users seem to be happy with how we do it (which incidentally is the same was as Firefox).