Alan Pope wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 03:49:28PM +0000, hantslug@??? wrote:
>
>> I have been trying now for something like 14 hours to retrieve my husband's
>> email from Thunderbird on the damaged installation (/dev/hda2 (boot) 6 (root)
>> and 7 (home)) on one hard drive to the new installation on another hard drive
>> (dev/hdb1 etc.).
>>
>> I have googled and tried multifarious suggestions I found. For various
>> reasons, none has worked. It is, of course, possible that the reason I
>> cannot retrieve the emails is that that directory/file too is corrupted, but
>> the failure seems more likely to be human.
>>
>>
>
> Isn't thunderbird mail held locally as lots of little folders and files that
> you can import? I am sure I migrated clare from thunderbird to evolution
> by copying the .thunderbird mail folder and importing the mbox files into
> evolution.
So following on from that I think you are looking at the contents of
'~/.mozilla-thunderbird' Lisi.
I have always done something along the lines of building the new box,
installing Thunderbird, copying the old Thunderbird mail directory
across to the new build, then:
- back up the new ~/.mozilla-thunderbird folder
- figure out which of the relevant folders is the one that holds the
mail on the old build (say, .mozilla-thunderbird/hm5kjjh2.sean)
- figure out which is the new one (it will be similarly named and have
similar contents, say ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/x4hyhrml.sean)
- move the old mail folder to the new name and location (mv
<path_to>hm5kjjh2.sean ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/x4hyhrml.sean)
- fire up Thunderbird and curse me if it fails!
Now, I am just going out of the door* and this is off the top of my
head, and may be the flakiest way of doing this imaginable, so please
ensure that you have good copies of both the new and the old
installations so that you can easily revert back if necessary.
Also, don't take it too literally - I may have missed out something. The
principle is that you create the new environment on the new build and
then drop in the old mail directory, renaming it to the new, empty one.
Sean
* to see British Sea Power in Portsmouth - w00t!
