Migrating from Fossamail

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Rickkins
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Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Rickkins » 2023-04-20, 14:08

Is there a preferred method..??
Thanks.

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Rickkins » 2023-04-20, 14:58

Ok, so I just copied the profile, seemed to work fine, once I found the program that is... :D

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Rickkins » 2023-04-20, 21:53

Alas, seemed to work but does not really.
The profile was copied, but does not work. Does not accept passwords, not even when I copy them one at a time by hand.

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back2themoon
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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by back2themoon » 2023-04-21, 07:12

If you are using Gmail, additional setup will be required in any case. Search for OAuth2 here in the forum.

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by andy80 » 2023-04-21, 08:04

Moreover, there are files inside the profile directory that store the full path to files/directories in the profile itself. So, you should find and adapt all these paths.

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by back2themoon » 2023-04-21, 09:39

...and since it's really a different program, the safe and recommended method is to start over with a new profile, to avoid expected and unexpected issues.

You can easily export/import Address Books, but for everything else it's always best to start fresh, and then regularly backup your profile.

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by ag0044 » 2023-04-22, 10:04

In my experience, you would be much better off if you started with a completely clean profile and went step-by-step to bring in your messages and your preferred add-ons. It's somewhat tedious, but it ends up being better.

Recently I had problems with an age-old profile. Starting with a clean profile solved the problems (see https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=29043).
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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-04-30, 14:33

Passwords not working is expected because password storage is incompatible between FossaMail and Epyrus. You could use the existing mailboxes from FossaMail but a lot of the base profile files should be Epyrus-generated.

Of note you can use the account preferences to point to specific mailbox locations (which is where hard-coded paths comes in, too)
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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2023-05-02, 18:38

you can use account preferences to point to specific mailbox locations
In case this is talking about where the MSF files live, I can advise from first-hand experience that this has never worked for me: trying to share a "Local directory" between the same mail account accessed by more than one TB-like client. Maybe there's a trick to it I never found? But the common outcome is the second client created new MSFs and subdirectories per-folder with a '-1'-etc appended to the names. Or worse, setting up the columns-etc for a folder then fubarred that folder for the *first* client. So as usual, back up your real data and experiment on an expendable profile.

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-05-02, 21:43

Bilbo47 wrote:
2023-05-02, 18:38
trying to share
No, don't share. concurrent access will break the mailboxes.

I just mean pointing the accounts to specific locations where the mailboxes are stored.
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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2023-05-03, 23:02

Bilbo: trying to share
MC: No, don't share. concurrent access will break the mailboxes.
Sequential access fails under that setup, let alone concurrent. One client is closed before the next client is launched. No two clients are open at the same time, so this is not 'concurrent access'.

In a working setup I have an 'IMAP-Accounts' folder to contain all account-folders - one folder per account. This keeps mailbox data separate from the profile. But then each client, in addition to needing a private+non-shared profile folder, needs its own 'IMAP-Accounts' folder for storing account-mailboxes, because each account is named the same in the different clients.

I mean pointing the accounts to specific locations where the mailboxes are stored.
So what does this mean exactly / what am I missing?

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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-05-04, 00:19

IMAP "account mailboxes" aren't actually account mailboxes. they are stored on the server! So of course that will NOT work if you have multiple applications getting confused by having something else changing the metas.
This will only work with POP mailboxes i.e. local storage. Then again if you use IMAP you don't have to mess with local mailboxes anyway since, once again, it's all server-stored.
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Re: Migrating from Fossamail

Unread post by Bilbo47 » 2023-06-06, 15:52

Moonchild wrote:
2023-05-04, 00:19
IMAP "account mailboxes" aren't actually; mailboxes are stored on the server. So it will NOT work if you have applications having something else changing the metas.
Good point. The filesystem folders that contain message data-files live on the IMAP server, not on the local machine.

So within a client mail-account, for the portion of mailbox-related metadata-etc stored locally, what would we call that folder / data-blob: maybe like 'local mailbox metadata'? Just to distinguish from the metadata stored in the server-side mailbox folder, such as [un]read-flags/whatever else is encoded into the message filename for example.

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