Setting up a redundant computer to use primary's backed up profile when primary is down and different passwords required for each machine.
I currently have TB 102 running on a Linux Mint desktop. The email is POP3 from att (actually snet). They require a different app password for each computer. I have the different app password. I want to use my Linux Mint laptop to access my email and use a backup of the desktop's profile when the desktop is out of service. Laptop does not have any .thunderdird folder yet as TB has not been started. I am looking at the http://mzl.la/1ApHiU3 support page. It seems that these instructions are replacing Laptop's hidden .thunderbird folder with desktop's .thunderbird folder. This seems odd since Step3 of "On your Destination Computer", opens Thunderbird. Won't that create a .thunderbird folder with new installs.ini and profiles.ini files? They will be replaced in Step8.
I am concerned that Step3's newly created .ini files (which have a different hash that links them) will be lost in Step8 and there is some dependency on that hash value that is not clear. Is that hash sent to the email server so that they can identify the machine/app that is accessing their server?
Is there a more appropriate support page for what I need to do? I am not clear on the subsequent steps to launch TB on the laptop and change the password on the laptop. At some point I would need to reverse the direction to bring the Laptop's Profile back to the Desktop. Any advice would be appreciated.
Chosen solution
Congratulations on figuring all that out! :)
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I know there are some who manage to share the same profile across multiple computers, but it's a delicate dance. If your accounts are IMAP, I suggest you take the easier route: - install/setup thunderbird on one computer - make backup of profile - install thunderbird on second computer - copy profile to second computer
As stated, I currently use a POP3 connection and have years of local mail which I wouldn't want to loose if the desktop went down. Introducing a different protocol, might work going forward but would not support access to the historical local emails. Is that correct? I wanted to keep this thread focused on the current POP3 situation. If POP3 cannot be resolved, then I would start a new thread on how to clean up from previous POP3 connection attempts and switch to a IMAP. Any suggestions on other support articles or how to proceed?
I think you will be okay by just copying the Mail folder between the two. Set up the second computer offline so that it does not download messages. Then exit thunderbird and copy the Mail folder in place and restart thunderbird. Each PC may have a different password, but the Mail folder is limited to messages.
Dave, I was able to manually configure the account offline and carefully reset all properties as they were on the desktop, except for the passwords. I shutdown and successfully replaced the Mail folder in the Laptop's profile. Thank you! That will handle the messages. Is there a way to identify the files that define the address books? I see three in the interface, Personal Address Book, Collected Addresses and One I imported from a file. Again, the intent is to have the laptop as a redundant device should the desktop go south.
I have had success in sharing addressbooks by copying and pasting all files beginning with abook and history.
I had a slight problem with that. In the Desktop's TB address books there 3 Books: Personal Address Book, AAA and 200 others, Collected Addresses. They contain 11, 201, and 16 contacts respectively. On the Desktop (and it's backup) there are the following abook* and history* files: abook, abook-1, history . Each have both an old .v3.sqlite suffix and a current .sqlite suffix. So that is 6 files in all. The 3 current .sqlite files were copied into the Laptop's Profile replacing the exiting abook.sqlite and history.sqlite as well as inserting the abook-1.sqlite. When the Laptop TB was launched it picked up the Personal Address Book, and Collected Addresses but was missing the 201 contacts imported into the Desktop called AAA and 200 others file. I did some sleuthing and saw that the prefs.js file did not have any ldap entries for the missing contacts from the "AAA and 200 others". I found the Desktop's entries in it's prefs.js and inserted those 4 lines for the abook-1 file into the laptop's prefs.js. Upon relaunching TB my missing contacts were found! If you have any problems with what I did please advise on what I should have done differently. If there is no other feedback I will mark this as solved. Thanks for your help!
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Congratulations on figuring all that out! :)