Okay, I'm running Ubuntu, seems great but hasn't been very stable, breaks as often as M$ did. In it's deffense I could have some hardware issues but I'm going to try something new for now. I was able to use Knoppix to go in and backup all I needed but I have no idea how to backup Thunderbird and I don't wanna loose my inbox and deleted mail. So can somebody please walk me step by step through what folders to find what in, what to back up and where to put what to find it on the new system.

Thanks a lot!

The linux thunderbird settings and whatnot are saved in your home folder in a hidden directory called
.thunderbird . Save that folder just like you backup your other stuff.

Stupid question but if it's hidden how can I find it? Second, I see more then one folder under mozilla-thunderbird, what folder do I save? I need somebody to say click on home, then bin then blank and save this folder. Then put it back in the same spot on the new system.

Thanks!

Hidden files start with a . in the name.

You should have a folder named
.thunderbird
in your home directory. Back up the whole thing as homey said.

In a terminal window, you can see the hidden directories with
ls -a

konqueror can be set to show the hidden files (somewhere in the menus).

I'm not ruling out here that I have mental issues but I don't get this. I have the following folders I see:

bin
dev
etc
home
lib
sbin
root
sys

And a few others. I do not see a hidden folder in any of these, when I click on home I get the computers name, when I click on that I don't get any thunderbird files or other folders. Can somebody just say click on this, this and this and save the folder you find there..

I'm sorry, my wife says I'm not right in the head and I guess this just shows she's right!

ON THE UP SIDE!! 3 Months windows free!

That's why they are called hidden.

Anywho, if you are using konqueror, there is a feature to view hidden files....
Veiw
Show Hidden Files


And if you want to see them from the command line, type: ls -al

Open Konqueror --> Menu [View->Show Hidden Files] . You should see all the folder's which start with a . in front of them

or)

Open a terminal -->
#cd /home/SonoranFun [Change directory to your home Dir]
#ls -a [should list all the folders including the hidden folders]
#cp -r -f .thunderbird /home/SonoranFun/ThunderBird-Backup/.thunderbird

Thank you! That did it, I didn't know what can I say! I got it rolling now! When I'm done just drop the folder back in the same spot I assume?

Yes if you install the same version of thunderbird, I previously had problems with plugins.. which were disabled when I installed the newer version.