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Installing Tbird on a different Linux file system (similar to protable)?

JJM-2

Is it possible to install Tbird on different filesystem separate form the OS without having symlinks coming from the OS area i.e installing it like a portable?

I checked out a couple of Thunderbird-*.tar.xz packages from the [[Mozzilla Archive.|https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/]] Mozzilla archive. Unpacked them in the target area and discovered that the permissions of the executables were not suitable, not set to execute it was all read/write.

The official only gives you the option of the default, $HOME and no where else. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-thunderbird-linux ' "Why do this: Putting Tbird and its profile together in a separate area allows me to keep a long term backup of an account before I delete it. It becomes a trivial matter of restoring and access the contents without relying upon an existing tbird installation. This is trivial in Windows with a portable Tbird, it only adds about 350MB to the backup.

Is it possible to install Tbird on different filesystem separate form the OS without having symlinks coming from the OS area i.e installing it like a portable? I checked out a couple of Thunderbird-*.tar.xz packages from the [[Mozzilla Archive.|https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/]] Mozzilla archive. Unpacked them in the target area and discovered that the permissions of the executables were not suitable, not set to execute it was all read/write. The official only gives you the option of the default, $HOME and no where else. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-thunderbird-linux ' "Why do this: ''Putting Tbird and its profile together in a separate area allows me to keep a long term backup of an account before I delete it. It becomes a trivial matter of restoring and access the contents without relying upon an existing tbird installation. This is trivial in Windows with a portable Tbird, it only adds about 350MB to the backup.

All Replies (1)

Not sure what you're up to - it sounds overly complicated to me. For a backup, all you need to do is to copy the Thunderbird profile to a place of your choice while Thunderbird is closed. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile

Restoring the backup is trivial, copy the backed up profile back to the actual profile location.

For IMAP accounts, make sure to turn on 'synchronization' for all folders, so that there is actually something you can back up. Synchronization means that Thunderbird downloads an offline copy of all your messages to the local disk. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/imap-synchronization

There is no point backing up the application itself.

Modified by christ1

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