FreeBSD 14.2; Thunderbird 128.6; Chromium, Iridium, etc

Dear folks,


I just upgraded from 13.3 to 14.2. Maybe I missed the memo; but moving 
home directories from /usr/home back to /home broke Thunderbird, it 
couldn't find my folders.


(When I say 'upgrade', I mean 'install an up-to-date version of FreeBSD 
on a different laptop, install up-to-date applications, rsync my home 
directory to the new install, then make the jump'. Not freebsd-update(8).)


The fix is to edit these two text files:


/home/LOGIN/.thunderbird/????????.default/folderCache.json

/home/LOGIN/.thunderbird/????????.default/prefs.js


... where '????????' represents 8 
Thunderbird-assigned-at-the-time-of-account-creation random ASCII 
characters that seem to represent a unique ID.


If you've done this a few times your files may be quite old and contain 
references to accounts that you no longer use but a global 
search-and-replace should not damage these definitions either as if they 
still exist their paths will need to be updated as well, and if the 
folders no longer exist then you may safely engage in some housekeeping 
and delete those other lines.


Here's hoping it helps those of us with not much hair to spare to avoid 
ripping out what is left, in frustration, after an upgrade.


The output from 'pkg add -y thunderbird' is pretty sparse - less then 
ten lines. Not complaining but that might be a good place to put hints 
for administrators overseeing the upgrade - it's not done until the 
users can read and write email.


'thunderbird --help' refers to something called a "Migration Manager" 
but I could find no documentation on this from the command line; 
Thunderbird has no online UNIX manual page, alas.


You may also find Chromium to be uncooperative; if it was running when 
you did your rsync, then you will have to remove the following file 
before it will start on the new machine:


% rm -f .config/chromium/SingletonLock


You may as well remove them all:


% rm -f .config/chromium/Singleton*


You might even want to do this:


% rm -f .config/*/Singleton*


... that will fix Iridium and ungoogled-chromium, too.


Regards,


~richard


=====


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