On Thu, 27 Sep 2007, Art Wildman wrote:

> Jon Peatfield wrote:
>> At least on SL308 the thunderbird 1.5.0.12 would offer to convert/import
>> a mozilla/netscape profile if the user didn't have any profiles when it
>> was first run.
>>
>> On SL50 (i386 tested so far), it no longer seems to do that.  Instead it
>> seems to make a default profile and then start the add account wizard.
>>
>> For people converting from netscape/mozilla/seamonkey mail this is rather
>> more effort for them so I'm puzzled why this would have changed (especially
>> when it is the same version of thunderbird).
>>
>> Of course it may just be that we have managed to break our thunderbird
>> setup to make this fail (I can't see any reason why it would be disabled
>> by default).
>>
>> Does it work for anyone else in SL50?
>
> Transferring data to a new profile - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Migrating_settings_to_a_new_profile

Checked those options already, and no they don't seem to work for us on 
SL50 (I've now checked on both i386 and x86_64 versions).

   http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird
   http://kb.mozillazine.org/Migrate_from_Mozilla_Suite_or_Netscape_to_Thunderbird

suggests using:

   thunderbird -createProfile <Profile Name>
   thunderbird -P <Profile Name> -migration

which works fine with thunderbird on SL3x but not on SL50 where I just get 
an error for the -migration:

   $ thunderbird -createProfile test4
   Success: created profile 'test4'
   $ thunderbird -P test4 -migration
   Warning: unrecognized command line flag -migration

Indeed it appears that (on SL3) just specifying -migration offers to 
convert into the default profile, though if I cancel the migration wizard 
then I also see the 'Warning: unrecognized command line flag -migration' 
error...

> There may be some -profilemanager, -profile or other command line
> arguments that could help you...
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

On SL50 thunderbird seems to ignore that a user has a mozilla/seamonkey 
profile it could transfer and just starts them off with a blank profile 
and then runs the 'new account wizard'

I'm wondering if this is just an oddity of our setup here - did we break 
thunderbird's migration feature somehow which is why I wondered if it 
works for *anyone* out there...  Or maybe for this to work thunderbird 
uses/needs a piece of the mozilla/seamonkey code.

Of course once all the users have converted from mozilla/seamonkey to 
thunderbird it won't really be a bit deal and we can currently advise 
people to do the profile-conversion by ssh'ing to an SL3 machine and 
running thunderbird -migration there...

-- 
Jon Peatfield,  Computer Officer,  DAMTP,  University of Cambridge
Mail:  [log in to unmask]     Web:  http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/