Trying to access multiple profiles in icedove

Oops. Where I used "Other Mail" the correct terminology for icedove is "Local Folders."

In my original topic:
> http://trisquel.info/en/forum/profile-manager-icedove-doesnt-see-imported-profiles-or-any-profile-matter-unless-i-delete-pro

I got a list of complaints upon starting icedove. Now when I try to start icedove in the syntax deduced from this page:
> http://dev.man-online.org/man1/icedove/

The closest I get to a start on the solution is this:

> amenex:~/.icedove$ icedove gqat6csx.default
> (process:7095): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
> (icedove:7095): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::sm-connect after class was initialised
> (icedove:7095): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::show-crash-dialog after class was initialised
> (icedove:7095): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::display after class was initialised
> (icedove:7095): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::default-icon after class was initialised

Those remarks are what I got in that original topic.

All other attempts based on the dev.man-online.org icedove manual either get me the same list of complaints or a blank Profile Manager popup.

How to I access a list of existing profiles upon starting icedove ?

Try icedove -profilemanager

Legimet suggested:
> Try icedove -profilemanager

That's logical, but all I see for a list of profiles in the Profile Manager popup is "default."

Anything else gets me to square one, i.e., setting up a new account.

Here's a truncated list of what the referenced man page has:

> -P [profile]
> Start with profile. When no profile is given, displays the Profile Manager. May require -no-remote, see below.

Nope; the Profile Manager popup appears with a blank list.

> -migration
Start with migration wizard. May require -no-remote, see below.

Not productive.

> -ProfileManager
> Start with profile manager. May require -no-remote, see below.

Just a blank list.

> -no-remote
> Don't connect to a running Icedove instance. This option can be necessary in conjunction to several of the options above, that won't have any effect when an Icedove instance is running unless -no-remote is used at the same time.

Ineffective with no other instance of icedove running yet.

> -mail
> Open the mail folder view.

Same result as specifying the desired profile.

> -file
> Open the specified email file

Same result as specifying the desired profile.

I think you can specify an existing profile. Is there a "choose folder" somewhere in the "create profile" wizard?

Legimet asked:
> Is there a "choose folder" [anywhere] ?

Here are the choices given by the Profile Manager popup:

>> Create Profile
>> Rename Profile
>> Delete Profile

Right-clicking on any of these is ineffective.

Selecting "Rename Profile" just produces the suggestion that the original profile name is "default." Erasing that suggestion is unproductive: no list of existing profiles emerges.

As the result of all these experiments, my main profile is inaccessible now. Not your fault; it's been that way ever since I modified that profiles.ini file. Don't do this at home; only experts are qualified for these stunts.

Fortunately, my main profile remains unchanged in the time since I last opened icedove successfully.

Use the "create profile" wizard. Click next until you see a "choose folder" option.

Legimet suggested:
> Use the "create profile" wizard. Click next until you see a "choose folder" option.

Progress. In the intervening time, I had deleted the proflies.ini file, and now when I get the Profile Manager popup, there's an icon depicting a person's head & shoulders instead of the previous unhelpful suggestion, "default.".

However, I also tried starting icedove in the interim, and it says that my profile is missing, even after a restart of Trisquel.

Now, following legimet's suggestion, I can proceed to a visible list of my actual profiles, all but one of which I have previously renamed to *.username01, *.username02, ... *.username04; my main profile remains *.default.

Fearful of destroying months of work, I chose to activate one of the *.username0? profiles, whereupon I was challenged to supply an email address and password. I tried my main email and the P/W that I use for authorization of sudo. No luck. Bear in mind that I was using several different email addresses in all the five profiles. Profile manager gives no hint of what it is expecting.

Progress and regression.

I found another way of accessing the list of profiles: Following Legimet's suggestion at the start, I proceeded to the list of available profiles, picked one, and then invoked it so as to get the Home Icedove Mail/News page.

Clicking on the 3-bars icon in the Home Icedove Mail/News page, I chose "open saved message" which gave me a list of recently accessed files. Navigating from there to my .icedove folder, I could then see my five desired profiles, plus a new presumably blank default profile folder. Three of the five profiles can be seen to contain accessible information and a fourth is blank, but the fifth, my main profile, appears in an incomplete form by this method of access.

Fortunately I had the forethought to save a copy of my 12GB main profile to a thumb drive.

If I click on "all files" in "open saved message" I can see the profile.ini and profiles.ini file, the latter which contains this text:

> [Profile0]
> Name=default
> IsRelative=1
> Path=ft16fssu.default

The Path statement points to the latest, but presumably empty, new default folder.

At one stage I had laboriously created a list of profiles in the Program Manager popup, but I had to delete that because of accidentally creating two entries with the same profile name, but I presume that by starting over, I can recognize the pattern that icedove follows so as to create a profiles.ini file of my own. However, I have no hope that icedove will accept that, as it won't even allow me to rename the profiles.ini file and later revert back to the original name.

What I am searching for is a way of generating in the profiles.ini file a list of the actual, real, historically useful profiles that I want to access as needed and which will afford me a choice of which version to use when starting icedove.

Proceeding to Terminal, I tried looking at profiles.ini now:

>> amenex:~/.icedove$ cat profiles.ini
>> [General]
>> StartWithLastProfile=0
>>
>> [Profile0]
>> Name=default
>> IsRelative=1
>> Path=ft16fssu.default
>>
>> [Profile1]
>> Name=6otj8u2m.amenex05
>> IsRelative=1
>> Path=6otj8u2m.amenex05
>> Default=1

In which there is a clear pattern as I predicted.

I could fill in the rest right now, but how can I get icedove to recognize my expanded version, and how can I get icedove to let me choose which one to invoke when starting icedove ?

There may be more difficulties as yet unresolved.

I read this How-To:
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Starting_your_Mozilla_application_with_a_specified_profile

And so I tried starting icedove from the command console this way:

>> amenex:~$ icedove -profile "6otj8u2m.amenex05"
>> (process:3558): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
>> (icedove:3558): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::sm-connect after class was initialised
>> (icedove:3558): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::show-crash-dialog after class was initialised
>> (icedove:3558): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::display after class was initialised
>> (icedove:3558): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::default-icon after class was initialised

There are some [unresolved ?] bugs that are found by searching on that GLib-Critical line ...

At any rate, there's something that stops icedove from starting (with whichever profile that I try.)

Here's the error message:

> Profile Missing
> Your Icedove profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

But it's still there, unchanged since I last successfully read my icedove emails this morning. It's the system that can't access my profile.

I can get into my main profile folder as described below:

Following my previous hypothesis, I created a new profiles.ini file with the text editor Kate that includes all the listed profiles in my .icedove folder, following the pattern suggested above. Then I saved it with a not-profiles.ini name into the .icedove folder, deleted the existing profiles.ini folder, and then renamed the not-profiles.ini file to profiles.ini. That's all.

After a precautionary reboot of Trisquel, I started icedove from the Desktop menu and got right back into my old, familiar profile, unchanged from this morning. Whew.

So far, in addition to my main profile that is so important, I can actually get into only one other profile when starting icedove, but at least I am now presented by the full list in the Profile manager popup. In two of the other four, I'm at the start-over stage enumerated before, what with having to create a whole new account, etc, which is nonsensical. In the fifth profile, it is empty, consisting of basic new, trash, etc. folders, all empty.

In the two profiles that now work, I am not prompted for any identity or authentication.

It seems that the one other profile that is now working contains most of the data that I was trying to combine into my main profile.

I think that more progress is possible with the two non-blank profiles if I just enter an existing email account & P/W.

The two supposedly non-blank profiles open up empty when I enter an appropriate username & P/W, even though I can view their far more delicately organized contents with file manager in the .icedove folder. More work is necessary ! With the selected username & P/W I can then download my mail from the ISP, but being sure to select "leave on the server" beforehand so they remain accessible to the main profile in a later session.

I did manage to prove that I can transport selected emails from one profile to another, however, by simply moving them into a newly created folder under Local Folders. One has to be open-minded when locating that folder, as it doesn't necessarily end up in Local Folders in the profile's directory structure. I found it in another place, but intact, and I could cut & paste it into the main profile's Local Folders directory, where I could then move the emails into their appointed place after starting icedove in the main profile.