A newer version of thunderbird may have made changes to your profile on a multiboot Debian/Ubuntu laptop
HI,
On a multiboot Debian/Ubuntu laptop I accessed to a shared .thunderbird profile with a newer version than usual.
When back to my usual thunderbird version I got the message "A newer version of thunderbird may have made changes to your profile..." and found whole mail and parameters lost ?!
Then, reading https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dedicated-profile-thunderbird-installation I used the --allow-downgrade option to run my usual thunderbird version and got mail and calendar back.
Great ! But I lost my whole 20 years adressbook.
I can't believe that developpers did such upgrades without previous advice or doing any backup !
Now I just hope there is a way to recover my adressbook.
Okulungisiwe ngu Wayne Mery
All Replies (3)
The simplest fix is to run the newest version of TB that shows the address books (not the usual version), export the address books to LDIF format, then import the LDIF files when you run the usual version on the same profile, with the downgrade switch.
Thanks, I do still have my adressbook in the newest TB.
But now that newest TB complains that a symlink .icedove exists. I have to remove it manually at each boot to get TB to start.
Okulungisiwe ngu kmc
kmc said
Thanks, I do still have my adressbook in the newest TB.
As you would be, or should be, aware there is no guarantee of compatibility on downgrade.
That is why the whole checking system was put in place, because people were using multiple versions of the product with the same profile data and it was corrupting things. A single prefs.JS file can not contain reference to the current sqlite address books and the previous versions mork based address books. The next version will I assume have it's own set of incompatibilities as development ramps up from an almost decade long slumber where development meant keeping the product in a buildable state and dealing with change from outside which made old ways incompatible.
kmc said
HI, Great ! But I lost my whole 20 years adressbook. I can't believe that developers did such upgrades without previous advice or doing any backup ! Now I just hope there is a way to recover my adressbook.
They did create a backup, they renamed the files with a new extension and generated the new format address book SQLITE files from them and entered them into the prefs.js file. Renaming the old files will force them to be read again on the running of the new version. What they did not do was maintain backward compatibility of the user profile.
kmc said
But now that newest TB complains that a symlink .icedove exists. I have to remove it manually at each boot to get TB to start.
See https://wiki.debian.org/Thunderbird#Adoption_of_User_Profiles Apparently there can be issues and they discuss how to fix them on the Debian Wiki
I do not profess to understand how Debian works, but it sounds like the conversion script for ice dove did not complete as it should have.