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OT Thunderbird eMail passwords gone



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 27th 19, 11:06 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Marty[_9_]
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Posts: 1
Default 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  
Old October 27th 19, 11:59 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mike Easter
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Posts: 1,064
Default 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  
Old October 28th 19, 03:01 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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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