Linux customers who use the Thunderbird e mail shopper know that this system doesn’t have a built-in technique for backing up total profiles on Linux. Consequently, customers trying to maintain a gradual backup of emails and consumer account knowledge must seek for an outdoor resolution to again up a Thunderbird profile.
SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial on the finish of this text.
Backup A Thunderbird Profile
Fortunately, the answer isn’t very sophisticated, as the entire program’s consumer knowledge is in a single folder in /dwelling/. Should you’d wish to maintain your entire configured add-ons and accounts you’ll want to maneuver some recordsdata round. To begin off with the backup, you’ll have to open up a terminal window. From right here, use the tar command to create an entire bz2 archive of the ~/.thunderbird folder.
Be aware: The Thunderbird E mail program units up profiles in /dwelling/. Should you’d wish to again up a number of consumer profiles, you’ll have to log into each consumer’s account and run the compression command.
tar -jcvf thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2 .thunderbird
Compression is often fairly fast. In some circumstances, it could take a very long time, particularly should you’ve bought quite a lot of knowledge in your profile. When the compression is full, you’ll see a file named “thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2”. This archive comprises all e mail account knowledge, add-ons, and many others. about your Thunderbird e mail shopper. Be happy to take this archive and add it to your Dropbox, Google Drive, or perhaps a dwelling file server.
Understand that this archive is wholly unprotected, and if it falls into the mistaken fingers, anybody may have prompt entry to your previous emails and numerous accounts. Afterward on this article, we’ll be going over methods to encrypt and retailer this knowledge appropriately. If you don’t intend on encrypting your backup, please, no less than use a secure password for the account and don’t share the archive with anybody!
Encrypting The Backup
There are various methods to encode your Thunderbird backup, however most likely the easiest way is to make use of GnuPG. It’s the usual encryption device on all of Linux, and also you most likely have already got it put in in your Linux pc. To use it, open up a terminal window and sort “gpg.”
Coming into “gpg” within the terminal with out anything will warn you that you simply “didn’t supply a command.” Utilizing GPG with none command arguments is OK. Doing it lets you already know that you simply’ve bought GPG in your PC. Should you don’t, look in your bundle supervisor (or nonetheless you put in software program in your Linux working system) and seek for “gpg” or “GnuPG” and set up it.
Subsequent, enter this command to encrypt your profile backup.
gpg -c thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2
Operating this command will present a immediate that asks the consumer to enter a password. You’ll want to use a safe, memorable passcode that no one will be capable to guess simply.
When the file is totally encrypted, delete the supply file, as thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2 is now thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg.
rm thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2
When the encryption course of is full, your backup knowledge is protected, and no one however you possibly can entry it. Be happy to add it anyplace.
Decrypting The Backup
Encryption and decryption with GnuPG work roughly the identical approach, in that the consumer wants to produce a command and a password to lock or unlock recordsdata. To decrypt the GPG file in your Linux PC, open up a terminal window and use the CD command to maneuver to the folder the place the backup is situated. On this instance, it’s in /dwelling/.
cd ~/
Contained in the /dwelling/ listing, use the ls command to make it possible for the thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg file is there. If the file isn’t on this listing and has moved contemplate doing this command to search out it:
find thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg
Utilizing the gpg command, decrypt the locked file.
gpg thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg
When decryption completes, rerun ls to disclose the decrypted archive. Your /dwelling/ folder ought to how have each thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg and thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.
Be happy to extract thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2, and delete the thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2.gpg file should you not need it locked away. In any other case, maintain each, and delete the tar.bz2 archive when achieved utilizing it.
Restoring Backup
After decrypting the Thunderbird archive, it’s possible you’ll need to restore the backup. Understand that should you’re doing this on a brand new pc, it’s possible you’ll have to delete the .thunderbird listing that’s already there.
Be aware: deleting this folder is critical, as quite a lot of Linux distributions that select to ship Thunderbird might have this folder.
To delete it, run this command:
rm -rf ~/.thunderbird
Whenever you’ve eliminated the default profile folder, extract your backup.
tar -xvf thunderbird-email-profile.tar.bz2
Every little thing ought to extract inside a .thunderbird listing in /dwelling/. If it doesn’t, use mv to maneuver it out of the mother or father folder (if it occurs).
cd ~/thunderbird-email-profile mv .thunderbird ~/ rm thunderbird-email-profile
