MEPIS Community Forum

What version of thunderbird had you been using in Mepis 8.5? (I see version 7.0.1 in the Mepis 8.5 CR)

Your old profile might have some settings/configs that were migrated to work with the newer versions of thunderbird and they might not be backwards compatible with icedove (I'm seeing 3.0.11, 3.1.11 & 3.1.16 as the available versions of icedove in Mepis 11)

Just a thought.....

Instead of copying folders externally, might it be possible to load up your settings and such using Tools-->Import?

Kmathern, I was using an old version of thunderbird (3.0.11), but you may well be right about an incompatibility between generations of the software (icedove vs thunderbird). Anyway, I caved in and switched back to thunderbird (ver. 7.01, from the CR repos) and there is no problem with the Preferences window.

DBeckii, the import function did not recognize that thunderbird had been used and did not offer anything to import.

I'm still interested in a solution to this problem. I did some googling around, looking for some helpful information about icedove and prefs.js, and had no luck. The search certainly wasn't thorough, but I need to get on with business.

Rob

PS Things I didn't try ...
Switching to icedove from thunderbird 7

I'm not sure about that - if so, it's possibly because of some add-on. I have always had multiple mail accounts (currently 5) and I've switched from Thunderbird to Icedove and back again without any problems, using the same profile throughout. The profile actually originated with my Win98SE installation, when I switched from Eudora. The latest switch was from Icedove 3.1.1 to Thunderbird 9.0.

I keep my profile on a data partition, and it's named 'MailProfile' - the profile folder doesn't have to follow the nnnnnnnn.default format. I edit the profiles.ini file to read:The only add-ons I use are Quicktext and Lightning (Iceowl with Icedove).

I don't know whether that gets you anywhere, but at least it shows that multiple mail accounts, switching between Thunderbird and Icedove, and different versions over the years do not necessarily cause a problem with a profile. I've looked at the prefs.js file before, and thought that it looked too much of a dark art to tamper with - not as bad as the Windows registry, though, and I've often played with that.

Phil

Like others I too keep my profile on a data partition. The only difference is when I do a new install I do the following. >> I go to the new profile folder & rename the prefs.js file. I then copy over the existing prefs.js file from my original profile. This gets the email client up & running. Once done I then open ( in my case Thunderbird ) >> click on edit >> account settings >> click server settings >> local directory, browse to my original profile >> select >> ok ok. Open folder properties & also select the original profile. Never failed yet.

Phil,

You might be right about an add on being the source of the problem. I looked prefs.js over and saw some things, including a few lines from add ons, that could definitely cause problems, but I think icedove should be able to read the old file and ignore lines that are a problem. That is apparently what thunderbird does. I expect the icedove developers missed a trick somewhere, perhaps because they didn't expect to deal with all the add ons.

Anyway, I like the idea you guys have about keeping the profile somewhere else. A while back, I started keeping most of my stuff in a common partition and then I could run multiple flavors of linux and still get to everything. Lately, I haven't been playing around like that, but it still makes upgrading easier. Putting the profile in the common space would help with that.

Chippy,

I'm going to have to think about your way of upgrading. Since you aren't switching to icedove, there is no telling if it would avoid the problem that I had.

Rob