After years of struggling with this process before muddling through, today I
was faced with
the fact that the trisquel community had gone hone for the weekend ... and so
I had to work
it out rather than complaining.
Here's what works:
1. The .icedove folder is indeed right there in the home folder. In the
terminal, type cd /home/username/.icedove
and a list of profiles (one from each attempt to get Icedove started) and
a profiles.ini file. We'll get to
the matter of editing profiles.ini later ... It's the oddly named profile
folder (looks like a password !) that
you want to migrate.
2. Be aware that going to /home/username and typing ls or cd .icedove doesn't
work; the path has to have a visible
file listed before the hidden file.
3. To prepare for the move of your Icedove profile, either cut & paste or
copy that profile into its new location,
also in the /home/username/.icedove folder of the new HDD. In my case it
was a long wait for 15GB of data.
4. Also in my case, Step 3 was made easier because the target location is in
the USB-attached HDD and the source
location is in the host computer's HDD ... no other media needed.
5. While still in the source HDD's /home/username/.icedove folder, copy the
existing profiles.ini file with the
terminal while giving the copy a new name: sudo cp profiles.ini
profilesTarget.ini.
6. Copy profilesTarget.ini from the source HDD to the equivalent location in
the target HDD with your file manager.
7. In the target HDD, edit the existing profiles.ini file. I used sudo nano
profiles.ini.
8. The original profiles.ini file will have one line called
Path=vkhf0fqm.default or similar. Your profilesTarget.ini
file will have _your_ profile folder's name in place of the above
Path=vkhf0fqm.default. To avoid any dramatic consequences,
I transcribed the correct profile folder's name instead of attempting copy
& paste, and then checked its accuracy. Do
not change anything else in the profiles.ini file. Once you're sure, hit
Contr.+X and say yes (Y) when asked to
save it over its original name. This technique avoids changing anything in
your profilesTarget.ini file.
9. Check your work with cat profiles.ini. The Path=myprofle.date line should
be your original profile's folder name,
and no other lines should have gotten changed, as you've put your migrated
Icedove in the same relative place on the
target HDD as on the source HDD.
10.Restart trisquel ... and then choose Icedove in the man menu. In my case,
there it was, just like before, with the
same arrangement and the same passwords, etc. to POP down mail from the
various locations.
If this seems wordy, remember that we're no longer struggling with paired
floppy drives and *+3 filenames.
George Langford
