Hi, Felix Miata! Thanks for writing, on 29 Oct 16 03:18:
If you're not familiar with http://seamonkey.ilias.ca/profilefaq/ maybe you should familiarize yourself with it. Some of what you're looking for is there. Don't let Mozilla profiles intimidate you. If you know how to backup and restore, the worst than can happen is you need to use those skills when you make a mistake, and maybe loose a couple of emails or web history entries. I've needed to restore several times over the years, but essentially I'm using the same primary SM profile that I used for the first Mozilla Suite version I ever used, long before v1.0 was released, and it was probably migrated from Netscape 4, which was probably migrated originally from Netscape 2.02 (on OS/2). Along the way I migrated my primary profile to Linux from OS/2, probably around the time Mozilla transitioned from 1.7.13 to SM 1.x.
I'm emboldened to hear from you: I hope my description showed that my 'history' is somewhat similar to yours: I also started in Netscape, progressing through MS and SM until the present day -- and, during that time, I went from Win2K to the currently-installing Win7.
I've managed to migrate profiles in those circumstances, so I'm not 'intimidated' by that, but know that "the devil is in the details", and am hoping to get concrete and specific 'details' which will help me in this latest migration. The problem with help/support' files like the one you cited is that most of them may not be clear or specific enough, or --even more dangerous -- are 'somewhat' outdated, so their details may, or may not, be 100% accurate and/or applicable...
Profiles can be located wherever you wish, and named whatever you wish. e.g., you could create E:\Internet\Profiles\aysmp1 to be the actual profile location for your own personal default profile. To use that location, open SM using the --ProfileManager option, then type in aysmp1 as the profile name, then choose E:\Internet\Profiles\aysmp1 as its location. To populate it with all your existing profile data, with SM closed, find your existing profile's location, and copy its content to E:\Internet\Profiles\aysmp1. If E:\Internet\Profiles\aysmp1 is the same actual disk location for both WinXP and Win7, then whichever of either you have booted will use the exact same profile. WRT profile creation, another option is simply to install SM, let it create a default profile normally, then close SM and edit the plain text profiles.ini file it created to point to the location you've chosen/created. Or, leave the default alone, and add your new one.
I have a tendency to 'personalize' systems installations, but have come to the conclusion that I should avoid that whenever possible, because many apps, extensions, advice, patches, etc., just assume you're using the system defaults, and don't bother to check that, or provide alternatives in case you don't. I once had to reinstall from scratch one Windows installation because, 'way down the install lane', one program assumed that the Win directory would be named "WINDOWS" (the system standard, and not "Windows", as I had used), so some features wouldn't work properly -- BTW, even MS is sometimes guilty of that, with a few features forgetting that full path-names in English may not work in 'foreign' systems...
The most widely encountered problem is programs which assume that your files are, or should be, on a "C;" drive, so if you try to, say, move all data folders to drive "M:", you'll have a mixed mess, with most files there, but some on "C:" -- and led me to decide to use the 'SM standards' unless I have a pressing need to avoid them, in some specific case.
Back to the current discussion: I prefer leaving SM (and FF) Profiles where Mozilla expects them to be -- which is why, as you suggested:
I installed the same SM version I have on XP to a W7 'temporary install', and saw that files are assigned to W7 (sub-)directories which don't even exist in XP
If before I had trouble guessing which program files would go into "All Users", which in my 'user folder', and which into their respective 'Local Configs', in W7 there are now "Program Files", a "Default user", and the breakdown is into "Local/LocalLow/Roaming", which leaves me even more confused! Relevant to this discussion, W7 put some of SM's files into "Users\[me]\AppData\Local\Mozilla\SeaMonkey", others into "Users\[me]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Extensions" and "...\Seamonkey", and some even in "Program Files\SeaMonkey\Extensions"!
So, I'd feel safer letting SM put everything wherever it wants, expecting that future versions will assume those locations, too, and so avoid unnecessary glitches; but that needs me to manually edit all 'relevant' files to reflect the new paths, and I was hoping someone, who had already gone through the WXP->W7 migration would have a handy 'cheat list' of ALL those locations... or, as I already said in a post I just wrote about this:
Perhaps you, or someone else, could list exactly which 'settings' would have to get pathname corrections (ie, the filenames, at least -- and the specific paths involved, if possible); plus, I'm worried that some extensions or addons could incorporate path/filenames in their data also: Does anyone know if that happens, and in which ones?
Also, since every extension creator does things his/er own way, the location of their specific data/files varies widely, too (I only recently found that they even can use the "about:config" to to do that), so I dread reinstalling the -- but, still, as I said:
I'm ready to 'start from scratch' and reinstall all extensions, but want to keep my 'history' -- which, since it's been incorporated into "places.sqlite", is sort of a "black box", so I don't know how I can 'migrate' it after a clean uninstall (specially since it's a database, not just a JS file).
I guess the use of extensions is as varied as the SM users are, so there may not be any one place where there is record of such addresses; but, hopefully, most won't at least use 'absolute addresses' (ie, hard-coded physical addresses in the OS's system)...
Most of most days, I'm running a minimum of two different SM versions and three different FF versions at once. I've been running multiple Mozillas at once for over a decade. I'm not a software developer of any kind. ATM on this machine, I have 10 FF profiles and 6 SM profiles. I have several Windows installations with SM installed too, though use them very little, maybe an hour a month or less on average. Managing profiles is really not hard, only unfamiliar, because need to arises so infrequently. SM (and FF) users are really blessed to have what we have persist so well over time and through OS upgrades.
While I know it's possible, I think I won't try to have one Profile which will be used simultaneously by XP and W7 versions of SM: That way, I suspect there's too much chance of unnecessary confusions (by me and/or by the system). I also have an installation of FireFox, because some sites, which have problems in SM, work fine with FF, so I use the "Open With" extension to remedy such situations with the least effort (BTW, the FF installation seems to copy many SM options and data without even asking; any guidelines for that?).
-- Thanks beforehand for your attention, and I hope to hear from you soon. s) Alexander Yudenitsch <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
