I have two computers (PC1, PC2) with Linux Mint 21.2. On PC1 I am using a Thunderbird installation (currently version 115.12.0 from official repositories) with multiple IMAP and POP accounts since several years. The mails are stored separately from $HOME/.thunderbird:
$HOME/bla/blub/ImapMail, and
$HOME/bla/blub/Mail
These paths are specified as local directories in the server settings of each account which works fine on PC1. Specifically, an IMAP account (that is deactivated, but the mails are still kept) is shown like this
and another POP mail account like this:
The source directory of the IMAP account ($HOME/bla/blub/ImapMail/imap.bla.de) looks as follows:
filterlog.html 198 2019-11-29
msgFilterRules.dat 25 2018-09-16
nstmp 2359296 2018-12-13
INBOX 695687544 2023-02-08
INBOX.msf 14033997 2024-07-09
INBOX.sbd 4096 2023-02-08
Archives.msf 2755 2019-06-23
Archives.sbd 4096 2019-06-21
Drafts 218913 2020-04-01
Drafts.msf 15559 2024-07-06
Junk.msf 0 2018-09-16
Sent 179646198 2020-04-01
Sent.msf 3571726 2024-07-06
Templates.msf 0 2018-09-16
Trash.msf 2928 2023-02-08
Now I'm trying to clone this setup to PC2 by following these steps:
- Thunderbird installation on PC2
- Copying $HOME/.thunderbird from PC1 to PC2
- Copying $HOME/bla/blub from PC1 to $HOME/bla/blub on PC2
- Starting Thunderbird on PC2
While expecting the same result as shown above for the source computer, I encounter two issues:
1. Right after installation, the emails of the IMAP account are not shown in TB because only one field "Posteingang" (= inbox) is depicted
the mailbox in the right hand window of TB appears to be absolutely empty.
2. After a few days including 1 or 2 system reboots, now the POP account suddenly seems to be empty, although it was showing the mails right after TB installation:
Only Trash and Inbox are listed but empty, so all emails are downloaded once again. But unfortunately the mails of the earliest years are not available on the mail server anymore, so those mails are missing and only available in my TB installation of PC1 (which I therefore want to transfer to PC2).
What am I doing wrong? Can someone please give me some hints on how to achieve a cloning of everything onto a new machine? Many thanks in advance!