Easiest Way To Move Thunderbird Mail Folders To Another Computer?

[Robert L Cochran]

I have a .thunderbird email client folder on a Fedora 7 x86_64 system
that I need to move to a Fedora 10 x86 system. It occurs to me that if I
move this, and then start thunderbird on the new system, I might have
trouble because of 64-bit code. Also trouble with updating Enigmail. I
want to be sure I can sign and encrypt email messages. Am I better off
just moving

.thunderbird/[salt].default/Mail/*
.thunderbird/[salt].default/abook.mab

What file(s) store the email account information?

Or, to make a long story short, can I just tar up all of .thunderbird
and not worry about conflicts on the 32-bit system?

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

[Kevin Cummings]

Robert L Cochran wrote:
> I have a .thunderbird email client folder on a Fedora 7 x86_64 system
> that I need to move to a Fedora 10 x86 system. It occurs to me that if I
> move this, and then start thunderbird on the new system, I might have
> trouble because of 64-bit code. Also trouble with updating Enigmail. I

There should be noting specific to 32-bit or 64-bit in your .thunderbird 
directory.  I know, I upgraded an FC6.i386 system to F9.x86_64 and my 
Thunderbird just plain continued to work.
> want to be sure I can sign and encrypt email messages. Am I better off
> just moving
>
> .thunderbird/[salt].default/Mail/*
> .thunderbird/[salt].default/abook.mab

You could just move the entire .thunderbird/[salt].default directory 
lock stock and barrel (AFAIK).  Make sure you edit the 
.thunderbird/profiles.ini file to properly reflect your default profile.
> What file(s) store the email account information?

They are all buried down in the profile directory structure.
> Or, to make a long story short, can I just tar up all of .thunderbird
> and not worry about conflicts on the 32-bit system?

That's my thought.  Good luck!
> Bob Cochran
> Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

[Robin Laing]

Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> Robert L Cochran wrote:
> > I have a .thunderbird email client folder on a Fedora 7 x86_64 system
> > that I need to move to a Fedora 10 x86 system. It occurs to me that if I
> > move this, and then start thunderbird on the new system, I might have
> > trouble because of 64-bit code. Also trouble with updating Enigmail. I
>
> There should be noting specific to 32-bit or 64-bit in your .thunderbird 
> directory.  I know, I upgraded an FC6.i386 system to F9.x86_64 and my 
> Thunderbird just plain continued to work.
> > want to be sure I can sign and encrypt email messages. Am I better off
> > just moving
> >
> > .thunderbird/[salt].default/Mail/*
> > .thunderbird/[salt].default/abook.mab
>
> You could just move the entire .thunderbird/[salt].default directory 
> lock stock and barrel (AFAIK).  Make sure you edit the 
> .thunderbird/profiles.ini file to properly reflect your default profile.
> > What file(s) store the email account information?
>
> They are all buried down in the profile directory structure.
> > Or, to make a long story short, can I just tar up all of .thunderbird
> > and not worry about conflicts on the 32-bit system?
>
> That's my thought.  Good luck!
> > Bob Cochran
> > Greenbelt, Maryland, USA

I will second this.  And if your .thunderbird directory is in the same 
/home/{user}/.thunderbird you will not have to change anything.

I have done two upgrades and all I did was copy the data and open TB. 
It isn't that much different than upgrading from one version of TB to a 
different one from my experience.