Re: FreeBSD 14.2; Thunderbird 128.6; Chromium, Iridium, etc

On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 02:17:20 +0000
Richard Childers <childers@redwoodhodling.com> wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> =====
> 
> 
> More info: https://www.redwoodhodling.com/Exhibits/
> 
> See, also: https://www.redwoodlinux.com/RaspiLab/
> 
> See, also: 
> https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-innovative-raspberry-pi-classroom-project 

Is there a symlink /usr/home pointing to /home?
If not, creating it could usually workaround the problem.

As I disliked previous default (/usr/home), I habitally create /home as
a directory (mount point) and created symlink /usr/home pointing to it
manually on installation (not using installer, though) for
copatibilities.

 *I've created a dedicated partition for /home before I've switched to
  Root on ZFS, and now creating a dedicated dataset for /home.
  So /home is a mountpoint anyway for me.

-- 
Tomoaki AOKI    <junchoon@dec.sakura.ne.jp>