After vfat file corruption, TB refuses to recognize email-store directory
Ubuntu MATE 16.04, current TB. /home/user/.thunderbird has an edited profile.ini that sets the message-store to an external USB hard drive, with directory /thunderbird_email. The HD is filesystem 'vfat'.
This arrangement has worked near-flawlessly for over 2 years. Recently, the HD had some data corruption that resulted in certain files in the /thunderbird_email message store to be set to 0 (zero) bytes. Running dosfstools repair on the HD left a dozen or so recovered 'fsck00001'-type files.
I'm praying that the files affected are ancillary ones. It looks like there is data present in the various email account sub-folders under /thunderbird_email/mail (?) for 9 email accounts, both IMAP and POP. The xxxxx.sqlite file in /thunderbird_email is 41.4Mb - for whatever that is worth.
Each time I start TB, it acts like it's being run for the first time, and wants to start setting up an email account. I've tried to find instructions or utilities/programs to either reconstruct the message-store, or at least try to access the email accounts data.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
Chosen solution
Well, after research, I created a way to extract emails from the message-store, including TB 'folders' (whose content looks just like emails). It does no interpretation of the resulting .eml files -- regarding emails whose content appears MIME (??) or HTML encoded, but it does endeavor to extract emails nonetheless. For Linux, source-code included. Could be applicable to TB users on Windows. Not sure about OSX.
https://github.com/gandsnut/ThunderbirdEmailRecover
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gandsnut said
Each time I start TB, it acts like it's being run for the first time, and wants to start setting up an email account.That suggest to me that it's your settings file (prefs.js) that is damaged, rather than the mailstores themselves. This file holds the account settings, and if it doesn't tell Thunderbird about your accounts then Thunderbird assumes it's a new installation and won't even look for existing mailstores.
Zenos: Your prefs.js comment was very helpful! Thank you.
I am now using an older (May '17) message_store on a different HD. TB starts and quits w/o problem.
If at all possible, is there a way I can try to extract emails from a message-store that I know has newer content? I won't be able to use TB because of some corruption that still exists. I can see w/ a file manager, into the folders where apparently the actual messages are kept.
Best...
Chosen Solution
Well, after research, I created a way to extract emails from the message-store, including TB 'folders' (whose content looks just like emails). It does no interpretation of the resulting .eml files -- regarding emails whose content appears MIME (??) or HTML encoded, but it does endeavor to extract emails nonetheless. For Linux, source-code included. Could be applicable to TB users on Windows. Not sure about OSX.