FIREFOX & THUNDERBIRD

[Darren Zawislak]

Peter Whittaker wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-01-27 at 11:41 -0500, Maurice Murphy wrote:
>   
>> So far, I've had no luck finding where the above are stored
>>     
>
> I cannot speak to Thunderbird, but FireFox is easy (I ran dual boot for
> a while, and copied my bookmarks, cookies, and other data between the
> Windows FAT and Ubuntu ext partitions - I did this to make sure nothing
> got corrupted whilst I became comfortable living under Ubuntu).
>
> FireFox's data files under Windows are going to be buried somewhere
> under "Document and Settings". This folder might be at the root level,
> e.g., C:\Document and Settings, or it might be in the system folder
> under profiles, e.g., c:\WinNT\Profiles\JoeUser\Document and Settings or
> c:\WinNT\Document and Settings\JoeUser
>
> Once you get there, look for folders named Application Data, then
> Mozilla, then FireFox, then Profiles, then a folder name that begins
> with "default". It will contain your bookmarks, your cookies, etc. The
> file names are pretty self-explanatory.
>
> I mounted the Windows FAT partition under Ubuntu, so the Windows FireFox
> folder appeared to me as
>
> /media/hda1/Documents and Settings/pww/Application Data/Mozilla
> /Firefox/Profiles/default.u5u
>
> The files of interest begin with book, cook, and hist. That is, move to
> the Windows FireFox profile folder and try the command
>
> 	ls book* cook* hist*
>
> Under Ubuntu, you want to place these in a burial vault in your home
> directory (burial vault is not a real Linux term, it's a comic reference
> to how deeply buried these things are). Mine was
>
> 	/home/pww/.mozilla/firefox/azbymfvf.default
>
> The simple commands for me were
>
> cp /media/hda1/Documents and Settings/pww/Application Data/Mozilla
> /Firefox/Profiles/default.u5u/book* /home/pww/.mozilla/firefox/azbymfvf.default
>
> cp /media/hda1/Documents and Settings/pww/Application Data/Mozilla
> /Firefox/Profiles/default.u5u/cook* /home/pww/.mozilla/firefox/azbymfvf.default
>
> cp /media/hda1/Documents and Settings/pww/Application Data/Mozilla
> /Firefox/Profiles/default.u5u/hist* /home/pww/.mozilla/firefox/azbymfvf.default
>
> Of course, nothing is ever that simple when I'm at a keyboard.
>
> I developed a script to reliably copy FireFox and Outlook data files
> back and forth from Windows to Linux, with date comparisons, force
> provisions, "do nothing, just tell me what you'd do" provisions, and
> confirmations. And debugging messages, of course.
>
> It may not be for the faint of heart, but I've attached it if you are
> interested. It will not work for you as is, unless your userid is pww
> and you've mounted your Windows partition as /media/hda1. At the very
> least, it may give you some ideas about what needs to be copied and what
> doesn't.
>
> The folder settings that matter are in the MODIFY BLOCK (comments begin
> and close this section).
>
> Re the implementation: It uses the bash array data structure to build a
> list of files to process. This is done so that the file list can be
> built once, and built conditionally based on what is being copied
> (FireFox files, Outlook files, or both). Then the array can be run
> repeatedly as necessary, for example, to ask the user whether they
> really wish to copy a file.
>
> That way, you can find all files that might be processed, choose the
> ones you want to process, then get a coffee while they are being copied
> (my Outlook files were hectomegabytes).
>
> Variable names are quoted to handle path names that contain spaces.
> Beware the quotes, balance your braces, do nothing with real data until
> you are sure you know what is going on. No warranties real or implied.
>
> FWIW, YMMV,
>
> pww
>
>   
Well, I finally can contribute........

In XP my data files for Firefox and Thunderbird are in C:\Documents and 
Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Thunderbird and C:\Documents and 
Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla

You need to watch out for hidden files in these folders. In the 
Thunderbird folder there is a profile.ini file. This file is different 
everytime you install Thunderbird. The contents point to a encrypted 
user name. So if you install Thunderbird on a different computer, then 
replace the folder contents of the new install with the old, you have to 
adjust the .ini file.

In my current .ini file, it looks like this:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/bjcmnf2h.default

Please notice the "Path=Profiles/bjcmnf2h.default" - that bjcmnf2h will 
be different for me when I reinstall the program again in the future. So 
I make sure I copy the entire contents of the folder including hidden 
files, then adjust the .ini when helping someone recover their data.

Darren