{"id":502,"date":"2006-04-01T19:41:35","date_gmt":"2006-04-02T00:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2006\/04\/01\/migrating-a-thunderbird-profile-from-w"},"modified":"2006-04-01T19:41:35","modified_gmt":"2006-04-02T00:41:35","slug":"migrating-a-thunderbird-profile-from-windows-xp-to-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2006\/04\/01\/migrating-a-thunderbird-profile-from-windows-xp-to-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"Migrating a Thunderbird Profile from Windows XP to Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n I decided to move my emailing activities from XP to Linux for *mumble mumble*
\n reasons. I thought it would be a rather simple operation of dump the data
\n files in the right place and be done with it but there are some small
\n things to keep in mind when doing the move. Here’s my diary entry on how
\n I got it to work properly. I’m not going to cover how you view your
\n Windows data. I imagine you have a Windows partition, a backup, or zipped
\n up the relevant data and now can easily access it somehow. If so, you can
\n adapt the directory paths for your situation.\n <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Thunderbird on XP stores the relevant data usually around C:\\Documents And Settings\\[Username]\\Application Data\\Thunderbird\\<\/b>
    I’ll call that
    \n $XP_TBIRD_HOME<\/b> for the rest of this article. So first find
    \n that directory.<\/li>\n
  2. Linux stores the profile data in $HOME\/.thunderbird<\/b>
    \n
    For the rest of this article I’ll call it $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>.
    \n Look for this directory as well or if not go to next step.<\/li>\n
  3. If it doesn’t exist create $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n mkdir $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b><\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Copy the profile directory from
    \n $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/Profiles\/[blah blah].default<\/b> into $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n
    \n cp -Rp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/Profiles\/[something]<\/b> $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n <\/em>\n <\/li>\n
  5. Copy the profiles.ini and registry.dat from $XP_TBIRD_HOME<\/b> into
    \n $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n
    \n cp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini<\/b> $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n cp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini<\/b> $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n <\/em>\n <\/li>\n
  6. Fix permissions and owners if you copied straight from a NTFS or
    \n FAT32 partition as root using chown and chmod stuff. I’m not sure
    \n my chmod-fu is 100% correct but I’d rather keep my mail stuff read only
    \n to me not the world.
    \n
    \n chown -R me:me $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n chmod -R 700 $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b>
    \n <\/em>\n <\/li>\n
  7. Edit $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini<\/b> and change the Path<\/b>
    \n variable from Path=Profiles\/[blah]<\/b> to Path=[blah]<\/b>.\n <\/li>\n
  8. Fire up Thunderbird on Linux. If it doesn’t bug you to create a
    \n profile and all that garbage you’re done! If not, then maybe you missed
    \n something in the steps above. You can always blow away
    \n $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME<\/b> and start from step 1 again until it works
    \n correctly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \n Just the commands version:
    \n mkdir $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n cp -Rp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/Profiles\/[something] $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n cp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n cp $XP_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n chown -R me:me $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n chmod -R 700 $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME
    \n vi $LINUX_TBIRD_HOME\/profiles.ini
    \n thunderbird &
    \n <\/em>\n <\/p>\n

    \n There’s a chance these instructions don’t cover all situations
    \n But after goofing it up a few times and stumbling on this. I’m pretty sure
    \n this way will guarantee you get your Thunderbird settings just right.
    \n That should migrate everything over including all your settings including
    \n which servers to connect to, spam settings, and even extensions you might
    \n have installed.\n <\/p>\n

    \n I’ve not tried moving all this data to a different
    \n machine architecture so I’m not sure if the binary data will hold but
    \n I’m going to guess ‘yes’. I imagine if you reverse the process a little
    \n bit it should be rather trivial to migrate from a Linux Thunderbird to
    \n a Windows Thunderbird. I imagine with some permutations it should be
    \n simple to adapt this to get your Thunderbird moved to OS X.\n <\/p>\n

    \n Links:
    \n     Sharing Thunderbird
    \n between Linux and Windows<\/a> (Might be useful for dual-booters but I wanted
    \n a full migration not sharing).\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I decided to move my emailing activities from XP to Linux for *mumble mumble* reasons. I thought it would be a rather simple operation of dump the data files in the right place and be done with it but there are some small things to keep in mind when doing the move. Here’s my diary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tagme"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}