Epyrus and MailStore Home

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ag0044
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Epyrus and MailStore Home

Unread post by ag0044 » 2022-11-04, 08:38

I'm having a problem with Epyrus and my email archiver, MailStore Home (MSH). I'd like to point out that it is not particularly an Epyrus problem.

I suspect that the root of my problem may be that, over the years, I have quite likely dragged effectively the same ever-growing profile from Thunderbird to Fossamail back to Thunderbird to Interlink to Epyrus - and probably a few other clients along the way.

I think I switched to Epyrus in late July, basically by copying over my Interlink profile. It wasn't until fairly recently that I noticed that the weekly archiving of my emails, using MSH, wasn't picking up any newer messages. I tried various MSH profiles: anything pointing to the current Epyrus profile just didn't work, while anything pointing to a clean new Epyrus profile did work (found the new emails).

A few days ago, a possible answer was posted in the MSH Community forum, at the bottom of this thread: https://community.mailstore.com/en/t/msh-no-longer-archives-new-emails-msh-portable-and-thunderbird-portable/2545

It suggests that the problem lies in the prefs.js in the current (in my case, Epyrus) profile, because MSH reads the prefs.js, which is actually pointing to mail directories that may no longer be in use. This information is in the prefs.js under the user_prefs

Code: Select all

mail.server.serverX.directory
(where X is a number). In my Epyrus prefs.js, there is nothing pointing to my current Epyrus profile. As the mail directories being pointed to are no longer in use, no new messages are arriving, so MSH can't archive them. As I have copied the profile from client to client, I can understand how this would happen.

For example, mail.server.server7.directory points to

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D:\\Users\\[UserName]\\AppData\\Roaming\\BinaryOutcast\\Interlink\\Profiles\\[Profile].default\\Mail\\[email address]
While mail.server.server8.directory points to

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D:\\Users\\[UserName]\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\[Profile].Default\\Mail\\[email address]
Neither are in use today, but I kept them for some reason that I can't now remember ... perhaps, "just in case"?

In the hope that there are someones who are more adept at this than I am, I have two questions: first, could I do worse than by trying to edit manually the current prefs.js, when Epyrus isn't running, to point to the "proper" directories? Having done a backup first, of course.

Second, while I would probably be better off to start completely afresh with a clean profile and import all my messages, RSS feeds and add-ons, my attempts in this direction so far have been unsuccessful, to say the least. If anyone knows of a guide to doing this, could you please point me to it?

I do have other weekly backups of my current Epyrus profile.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I'm more than slightly frustrated and annoyed by all this, especially by my inability to solve it.

Thank you
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athenian200
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Re: Epyrus and MailStore Home

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-11-04, 10:05

ag0044 wrote:
2022-11-04, 08:38
In the hope that there are someones who are more adept at this than I am, I have two questions: first, could I do worse than by trying to edit manually the current prefs.js, when Epyrus isn't running, to point to the "proper" directories? Having done a backup first, of course.
You could try it. I mean, I'm not saying it's without risk, but then again if you have an idea of what the issue might be, and you know you should backup your profile before trying it... then the worst that can happen is you corrupt the profile and you have to restore the backup, right? I mean, it's not going to cause a BSOD or anything.

Fresh profile would of course get you into a more properly tested configuration where you would be less likely to run into weird issues and make it easier for others to troubleshoot, but if you really want to fix your existing profile and you are willing to make a lot of backups and mess around/experiment with it until it works, that is an option too. It's really up to you how much time and energy you want to spend fixing up an old profile imported from another application to work with Epyrus.
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Re: Epyrus and MailStore Home

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-11-04, 12:07

You can change the server locations but then you also have to make sure that you physically copy or move the files or mail will get lost.
Note that you should change both the mail.server.serverX.directory and mail.server.serverx.directory-rel to point to the correct locations, where -rel is a relative path from [ProfD] i.e. the profile directory.
I believe the relative one is always tried first so if that isn't pointing to a strange path would be fine otherwise. Do take care in that case to check which location was actively used (relative or absolute) when looking at copying/moving files. You may not have to if the relative one was used. Check modified dates on the mailboxes ;)
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ag0044
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Re: Epyrus and MailStore Home

Unread post by ag0044 » 2022-11-09, 12:43

My thanks to you both for your advice and suggestions.

Short version: it's all working now the way I would expect it to.

Long version: I used a combination of both of your suggestions along with some ideas of my own. The real answer was to start afresh with a new profile, once I worked out how to use the ImportExportTools add-on properly, and then to set up a new profile in MailStore. Oh, and to make sure that I had backups of my profiles, and backups of the backups - they were needed. A few tweaks are still needed.

Side-note: I find it ... bemusing(?) ... that Epyrus worked fine with the old profile, even though the prefs.js was pointing in various other directions.

Again, my thanks.
Usually, I'm wrong. But, sometimes, I'm right.
Usually, I'm Left. But, sometimes, I'm Right.
Usually, I'm left-handed. But, sometimes, I'm right-handed.

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