[SOLVED] thunderbird local folders missing

CollieJim · 02-10-2014, 01:16 AM

Hi,

For portability, I had my .thunderbird folder on a removable hard drive. I recently upgraded the drive to USB3. I think it may have a problem with recovering from a low-power state.

Yesterday I tried to access my email after the computer had been idle for over an hour, and got errors. When I checked the .thunderbird folder there were about 10 files with ???????????? for permissions.

I appeared to be able to copy the folder to the internal hard drive without error.

When Thunderbird started, no errors reported, there were no local folders. Thinking the data was corrupt, I restored from backup. Same thing. I uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird. Same thing. No local folders.

Is there a setting somewhere outside .thunderbird that determines whether local folders can be used? Is there a problem with the latest version of the program? What's happening here???

?????
Jim

Habitual · 02-10-2014, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CollieJim

Hi,

For portability, I had my .thunderbird folder on a removable hard drive. I recently upgraded the drive to USB3. I think it may have a problem with recovering from a low-power state.

Yesterday I tried to access my email after the computer had been idle for over an hour, and got errors. When I checked the .thunderbird folder there were about 10 files with ???????????? for permissions.

I appeared to be able to copy the folder to the internal hard drive without error.

When Thunderbird started, no errors reported, there were no local folders. Thinking the data was corrupt, I restored from backup. Same thing. I uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird. Same thing. No local folders.

Is there a setting somewhere outside .thunderbird that determines whether local folders can be used? Is there a problem with the latest version of the program? What's happening here???

?????
Jim

Jim:

Thunderbird version please.
Depending on the filesystem used on the new or previous drives, it is likely a permissions issue. So fire up a terminal and issue

Code:

ls -dl .thunderbird/*.default

and show us the results please.

Thank you.

CollieJim · 02-10-2014, 08:55 AM

There is no *.default, but there is

Code:

drwxr-xr-x 10 jim jim 4096 Feb 10 22:43 default.2l4

I also had my photo collection, managed by digiKam, on the removable drive. I've moved it to the internal drive but digiKam will not add the collection.

I suspect my problem may be related to sqlite?

Both .thunderbird and the photo collection have been moved from ext2 to ext3 filesystems. I am the owner of all files and directories.

Habitual · 02-10-2014, 10:55 AM

Still would be helpful to know the Tbird version.
Also, can you create a new Tbird profile using

Code:

thunderbird -ProfileManager

in terminal with the same account info and tell us if the "Local Folders" is present after you do so?

Thanks.

CollieJim · 02-10-2014, 08:05 PM

I'm using Kubuntu 13.04 and Tbird 24.2.0.

The new profile has Trash and Outbox under Local Folders.

Problem solved!
I looked in Prefs.js for account details, and discovered that the path to the Local Folders is the actual path, not the link in my home directory. I edited Prefs.js (with Tbird stopped, of course) and I have my Local Folders back.

Thanks for your help.

Habitual · 02-11-2014, 08:55 AM

Glad it worked out!