• thundebird preferences tab

    From faeychild@2:250/1 to All on Mon Dec 28 02:31:15 2020

    Each time Thunderbird starts it opens the preferences tab and gives
    it focus.

    It's not the end of the world but I can't find a way to keep it closed
    across restarts.

    Is there a solution

    regards
    --
    faeychild
    Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-3.mga7 kernel.
    Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


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  • From David W. Hodgins@2:250/1 to All on Mon Dec 28 03:20:56 2020
    On Sun, 27 Dec 2020 21:31:15 -0500, faeychild <faeychild@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
    Each time Thunderbird starts it opens the preferences tab and gives
    it focus.
    It's not the end of the world but I can't find a way to keep it closed
    across restarts.
    Is there a solution

    Doesn't happen on my system. Try, in a terminal such as konsole with thunderbird
    closed ...
    su -
    chown -Rc tester:tester /home/tester

    Replace tester in the above with your login.
    That's from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Never_use_just_su

    The start thunderbird, close the preferences tab, close thunderbird and restart
    it to see if that fixed the issue.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

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  • From Herman Viaene@2:250/1 to All on Mon Dec 28 08:47:17 2020
    Op Mon, 28 Dec 2020 13:31:15 +1100, schreef faeychild:

    Each time Thunderbird starts it opens the preferences tab and gives it focus.

    It's not the end of the world but I can't find a way to keep it closed
    across restarts.

    Is there a solution

    regards

    Check in the preferences - General - the first item: Thunderbird
    startpage.

    Herman Viaene

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  • From faeychild@2:250/1 to All on Mon Dec 28 12:15:47 2020
    On 28/12/20 7:47 pm, Herman Viaene wrote:

    Check in the preferences - General - the first item: Thunderbird
    startpage.

    Herman Viaene


    Checking the StartUp page checkbox - no change
    --
    faeychild
    Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-3.mga7 kernel.
    Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From faeychild@2:250/1 to All on Tue Dec 29 02:15:58 2020
    On 28/12/20 2:20 pm, David W. Hodgins wrote:

    Doesn't happen on my system. Try, in a terminal such as konsole with thunderbird
    closed ...
    su -
    chown -Rc tester:tester /home/tester

    Replace tester in the above with your login.
    That's from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Never_use_just_su

    The start thunderbird, close the preferences tab, close thunderbird and restart
    it to see if that fixed the issue.


    Interesting stuff. The su, su -, is always in the back of my mind.
    I never quite understood it though..
    My problem doesn't seem to be with env variables, it's more a
    corruption of Thunderbird. init files .
    The old solution of renaming the hidden config directory initiates a
    new session of Thunderbird without the "stuck on" preferences tab.

    I will eventually have to sort through the "json, sqlite" files where it resides

    regards


    --
    faeychild
    Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-3.mga7 kernel.
    Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Tue Dec 29 02:58:10 2020
    On Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:15:58 +1100, faeychild wrote:
    On 28/12/20 2:20 pm, David W. Hodgins wrote:

    Doesn't happen on my system. Try, in a terminal such as konsole with
    thunderbird
    closed ...
    su -
    chown -Rc tester:tester /home/tester

    Replace tester in the above with your login.
    That's from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Never_use_just_su

    The start thunderbird, close the preferences tab, close thunderbird and
    restart
    it to see if that fixed the issue.


    Interesting stuff. The su, su -, is always in the back of my mind.
    I never quite understood it though..

    It is pretty straight forward. "su -" and "su - root" will use root's environment and just su will use whoever issues the "su". As a result
    of just su, any files modified/created will be owned by root, not the user.

    My problem doesn't seem to be with env variables, it's more a
    corruption of Thunderbird. init files .

    Yes, but, if you did a "su" and ran thunderbird, thunderbird's files
    could be owned by root and any changes made by you will not get applied
    to files owned by root.

    The old solution of renaming the hidden config directory initiates a
    new session of Thunderbird without the "stuck on" preferences tab.

    I will eventually have to sort through the "json, sqlite" files where it resides

    Here is a fun fact. Thunderbird/Firefox have a feature where you can
    set custom preferences in a file named user.js.

    Preferences set in that file override same settings usually found in prefs.js

    What I have done is use a test account, launch thunderbird/firefox and
    copy prefs.js to prefs.ref, then make all my custom changes and
    diff prefs.ref prefs.js
    weed out time/date/server items and anything not descriptive enough and
    you have your defaults for user.js.

    Since I saw a lot of new profiles with each release of TB/FF. I made a wrapper script to link $HOME/.user_firefox_prefs.js to FF's user.js and link
    $HOME/.user_thunderbird_prefs.js to thunderbird's user.js.



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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From faeychild@2:250/1 to All on Tue Dec 29 06:20:32 2020
    On 29/12/20 1:58 pm, Bit Twister wrote:
    On Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:15:58 +1100, faeychild wrote:
    On 28/12/20 2:20 pm, David W. Hodgins wrote:

    Doesn't happen on my system. Try, in a terminal such as konsole with
    thunderbird
    closed ...
    su -
    chown -Rc tester:tester /home/tester

    Replace tester in the above with your login.
    That's from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Never_use_just_su

    The start thunderbird, close the preferences tab, close thunderbird and
    restart
    it to see if that fixed the issue.


    Interesting stuff. The su, su -, is always in the back of my mind.
    I never quite understood it though..

    It is pretty straight forward. "su -" and "su - root" will use root's environment and just su will use whoever issues the "su". As a result
    of just su, any files modified/created will be owned by root, not the user.

    My problem doesn't seem to be with env variables, it's more a
    corruption of Thunderbird. init files .

    Yes, but, if you did a "su" and ran thunderbird, thunderbird's files
    could be owned by root and any changes made by you will not get applied
    to files owned by root.

    Yes I'm aware of that one these days. I did take David's warning onboard.

    I "ls -la" the foo.default Thunderbird directory; All the files are
    mine fortunately. Unfortunately one of them corrupted during a previous
    update and left me with a rogue preferences tab.

    A "junk" Thunderbird does not display the tab.



    Here is a fun fact. Thunderbird/Firefox have a feature where you can
    set custom preferences in a file named user.js.

    Preferences set in that file override same settings usually found in
    prefs.js
    <snipped>
    ....

    regards
    --
    faeychild
    Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-3.mga7 kernel.
    Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Herman Viaene@2:250/1 to All on Tue Dec 29 10:42:47 2020
    Op Mon, 28 Dec 2020 23:15:47 +1100, schreef faeychild:

    On 28/12/20 7:47 pm, Herman Viaene wrote:

    Check in the preferences - General - the first item: Thunderbird
    startpage.

    Herman Viaene


    Checking the StartUp page checkbox - no change

    What was there??? And did you restore the default??? What effect had that?

    Herman

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From faeychild@2:250/1 to All on Thu Dec 31 20:36:47 2020
    On 29/12/20 9:42 pm, Herman Viaene wrote:


    Checking the StartUp page checkbox - no change

    What was there??? And did you restore the default??? What effect had that?

    Herman

    The checkbox sates that it will display a start page in the message area.
    I didn't see any change. This could be further evidence of file corruption.
    I will have to examine the ".thundebird" folder more closely.

    This will take up some time. Digging through config files is a pain.

    The speedy alternative is to copy all my login details and remove all thunderbird config files and start again.

    Thunderbird is used for email and newsgroups. Reconfiguring will be
    quicker than tracking down a broken file. Not as intellectually
    satisfying though

    regards

    --
    faeychild
    Running plasmashell 5.15.4 on 5.7.19-desktop-3.mga7 kernel.
    Mageia release 7 (Official) for x86_64 installed via Mageia-7-x86_64-DVD.iso


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.17 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)