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#1
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OT Thunderbird eMail passwords gone
Marty wrote:
On Win XP Pro. Is there an app to backup the passwords ? How do I back up the passwords ? Step by step please. Thunderbird 52.9.1 (32-bit) lost the passwords ! I have a master and entered that then I had to re-enter all passwords for each email account. Accounts loaded new emails. I use one of those to compose and email and try to send but again it asked for the password. I had to enter it twice to get the email sent. Been using this laptop for years without problems now I restarted Thunderbird after several months on not using. What is going on ? |
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#2
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OT Thunderbird eMail passwords gone
Marty wrote:
Marty wrote: On Win XP Pro. Is there an app to backup the passwords ? How do I back up the passwords ? Step by step please. Recommendations are to backup the Profile, as opposed to individual files or directories in that directory. You can do that by copying the profile directory to another location. The easiest way to find your Profile in ANY OS is to use Help from the Menu bar or from the hamburger icon and use Troubleshooting item. When that window opens, it has a button for Open directory next to the Profile Directory item. Then you can see from the file manager's address line where that directory is that has been opened. Previously there used to be a MozBackup, but its development and maintenance ended long ago. I believe the Profile manager can still be run in any OS by starting from a closed Tb and using the command for the program thunderbird -ProfileManager https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...ird:linux:tb68 Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...rofile-manager Starting the Profile Manager There are also useful articles about this in the m'zine kb, but some of them contain older info. In order to use it usefully, one needs to know which info is old and which is still good, and how to find your way around http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Thunderbird and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Profiles and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager I prefer the moz kb over support.moz. -- Mike Easter |
#3
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OT Thunderbird eMail passwords gone
Mike Easter wrote:
Marty wrote: Marty wrote: On Win XP Pro. Is there an app to backup the passwords ? How do I back up the passwords ? Step by step please. Recommendations are to backup the Profile, as opposed to individual files or directories in that directory. You can do that by copying the profile directory to another location. The easiest way to find your Profile in ANY OS is to use Help from the Menu bar or from the hamburger icon and use Troubleshooting item. When that window opens, it has a button for Open directory next to the Profile Directory item. Then you can see from the file manager's address line where that directory is that has been opened. Previously there used to be a MozBackup, but its development and maintenance ended long ago. I believe the Profile manager can still be run in any OS by starting from a closed Tb and using the command for the program thunderbird -ProfileManager https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...ird:linux:tb68 Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...rofile-manager Starting the Profile Manager There are also useful articles about this in the m'zine kb, but some of them contain older info. In order to use it usefully, one needs to know which info is old and which is still good, and how to find your way around http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Thunderbird and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Profiles and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager I prefer the moz kb over support.moz. The location of your Windows home directory has changed over the years. The folder(s) that Thunderbird uses, should be similar in nature, just the area in the file tree where they're stored, changes. Some component filenames do get changed, from one release to the next. And things like this might be important, when changing versions and noticing your passwords have taken a hike on you. "NSS changed from legacy NSS database files cert8.db and key3.db to newer SQLite database files cert9.db and key4.db files." I would have thought, backing up the two Profile folders plus the profiles.ini folder would be enough. I've never needed the smaller folder, and only the big folder with the mails stored in it, that seems to be the most important one. Marty is on WinXP. Let's see where my "stuff" is there. C:\Documents and Settings\Bullwinkle\Application Data\Thunderbird\profiles.ini That's a text file (we could keep a copy, but only rarely would we need it). It points to the storage. [General] StartWithLastProfile=1 [Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 (Relative to Thunderbird\ folder) Path=Profiles/abcd1234.default The reason the forward slash is used, is because Thunderbird is a Linux program that also works in Windows. (The source code files also have the "wrong" line endings. I wrote a script once, to fix that, and it was a royal disaster :-/ Too funny actually.) That tells you where this one is. You could have more than one profile in the Profiles folder, and that's why the random identifier is important. If you're using Profile Manager, then the .ini file above ends up with multiple profiles listed, one a default, the others being "optional" and selectable via Profile Manager dialog. In my case, the situation is very simple, and very clear. I need to back up that abcd1234.default folder, for the most part. C:\Documents and Settings\Bullwinkle\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ folder = abcd1234.default 898,186,811 bytes === has the emails (back this up!!!) C:\Documents and Settings\Bullwinkle\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ folder = abcd1234.default === two XML files, install integrity When replacing files, you go through a similar song and dance. 1) Install Thunderbird, if it hasn't been installed. 2) Disconnect network cable. Run Thunderbird once, click cancel to all prompts. 2) Now, find the "profiles.ini" file. That helps you locate the desired location of the big folder. 3) The profiles.ini will contain a new "random" identifier, unlike your backup-copy one. You can edit profiles.ini to use "abcd1234.default" which was your old identifier. 4) Copy the large "abcd1234.default" folder into the Profiles\ folder next to profiles.ini. It makes it easier to find, if you follow conventions. 5) While you could copy the second (small) folder, I suspect it is involved with the integrity of the currently installed program, so jamming the small folder in there would be a mistake. Only if you were running the same version of Thunderbird, would it pay to mess with C:\Documents and Settings\Bullwinkle\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ If I was going from Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 52, I wouldn't be doing step 5. If I was going from Thunderbird 52 to Thunderbird 52, then restoring the folder with the two XML files makes a small bit of sense. But it could equally well contain references to stuff which is no longer in the install (are plugins recorded in those XML files???). I've only ever used the large folder myself, when moving stuff from machine to machine. I usually edit profiles.ini and change the folder name in there, and preserve the old folder name from the source tree, making it easier to find in emergencies. Also, my first steps with Thunderbird involve *unplugging the network cable*. Your first run of Thunderbird helps populate the profiles.ini file. Your second run of Thunderbird (with ancient profile now loaded), gives you a chance to disable updates and do any other necessary settings. Only when Thunderbird has been "beaten into shape", do you plug the network cable back in. (For you laptop users, pressing your "disable Wifi" PF key is the equivalent to "unplugging the network cable".) ******* As to why Mozbackup has so much code in it (Pascal source, of all things), I haven't a clue. Once you look at the .pas source files though, you'll get some idea why translating that source to Linux, isn't just a matter of modifying the home directory relative location of the big folder. This utility seems to do a significant amount of "sniffing", and it's not clear why that's necessary. https://github.com/JasnaPaka/mozback.../master/source Paul |
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