do most (desktop) linux have Firefox as standard?

[Woozy Song]

I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
what browser they have.
BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
browsers, no statistics to be found.

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/19/23 21:37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

I can see a non-trivial chance that Firefox isn't installed.

> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.

I suspect that the union of no Firefox and having Chromium is quite recent.

> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

I think that Firefox has effectively been /the/ web browser on Linux for
the last two decades.

There are and have been other options. But almost all of them have been
in addition to Firefox.

Maybe you'll find a web browser as part of the Desktop Environment; KDE
/ GNOME, without Firefox. But I suspect that's a minority.

There's a reasonable chance that there may have been a text mode browser
installed when Firefox wasn't installed. But I suspect that's more
along the lines of is X11 used or not than anything else.

IMHO Firefox, and Netscape before it, has been the defacto web browser
for Linux and Unix at large for the last quarter century.



Grant. . . .

[Mike Easter]

Woozy wrote:

> Subject: do most (desktop) linux have Firefox as standard?

Yes.

--
Mike Easter

[J.O. Aho]

On 20/11/2023 04.37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

xdg-open <url>

Most desktop comes with that one installed, it will then open the
browser the user has as the default browser. If the command is missing,
then you can start to think of finding a specific browser.


--
//Aho

[Marco Moock]

Am 20.11.2023 um 11:37:44 Uhr schrieb Woozy Song:

> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find
> out what browser they have.

Use x-www-browser to open a browser. It will open the browser that is
selected via the alternative system.

[J.O. Aho]

And then you limited to the debian family.

--
//Aho

[Carlos E. R.]

There is a way to ask the desktop to open the default browser.

Aho has mentioned this:

xdg-open - opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application

There may be others.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Marco Moock]

Am 20.11.2023 um 10:35:12 Uhr schrieb J.O. Aho:

> And then you limited to the debian family.

How do other distributions handle a browser call?
xdg-open?

[Lew Pitcher]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2023 11:37:44 +0800, Woozy Song wrote:

> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?
> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.

This problem has a number of alternate solutions:

The "Free Desktop" (freedesktop.org) people provide a utility
(xdg-open(1)) that will open the user's preferred browser, assuming that
the user's desktop follows the freedesktop.org standard, and that the user
has configured the desktop's "preferred browser" option.

Older standards provide for the BROWSER environment variable to contain
the path to the user's "preferred browser", assuming that the user (or
sysadmin) has set this envvar in the execution environment.

Even older, many programs provide a configuration setting for the user's
preferred browser, again assuming that the user has set the value in the
configuration.

FWIW, programmitically "guessing" the browser value is not a good idea;
it may not be possible to do, and a bad guess (such as guessing the
/wrong/ browser out of a list of installed browsers) can turn a user
off to your application.

> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

Probably because, even though some browsers /try/ to keep usage
statistics by causing the browser to ping home ever time it is used,
many users disable that pingback. And, the pingbacks that make it
through are considered, by the browser authors, as "privileged
information" related to their own estimate of market share, etc.


--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

[Blue-Maned_Hawk]

Whether or not Firefox is the most common, it's the only option worth
supporting, because it's the only browser that fully implements the web
that isn't Chromium-based.


--

[Paul]

There is Seamonkey, which is a suite likely originally based on
Netscape Communicator. It has a web browser. As well as an HTML editor.

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/releases/2.53.17.1/linux-x86_64/en-US/seamonkey-2.53.17.1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

That was released on September 20, 2023.

https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/

That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.

You can unpack the folder and run it as a portable item. You
are responsible for making a .desktop file, or for including
the executable in your PATH.

Paul

[J.O. Aho]

It's more or less the standard and it seems the at work ubuntu I have
also has it installed.

--
//Aho

[Marco Moock]

Am 20.11.2023 um 22:40:09 Uhr schrieb Paul:

> That's similar to Firefox, but without quantum.

IIRC it isn't anymore since FF went another way with the Quantum (and
successors) stuff.

[Paul]

Seamonkey only runs one process (which makes it "non-Quantum"). .

Modern Firefox runs seven processes or so (Quantum version, task isolation).
On Linux, you might even find labels for the
function of each process. I don't think the
info is as easy to get on Windows.

On Firefox, you might (in "top") see a process listed as "Isolated Web Container" instead
of the word "Firefox" as you might see in Windows Task Manager. Firefox uses
seven processes, so if a movie player process dies, the browser itself can
recover and continue from the loss of a child process.

Paul

[Marco Moock]

Am 21.11.2023 um 07:01:07 Uhr schrieb Paul:

> Seamonkey only runs one process (which makes it "non-Quantum"). .

I don't think this is the only difference.

SM uses FF91 as backend according to the User-Agent header.

[David W. Hodgins]

Currently running Mageia 9 here.

/usr/bin/xdg-open is in the xdg-utils package.

$ urpmq --whatrequires-recursive xdg-utils|grep minimal|sort -u
task-cinnamon-minimal
task-enlightenment-minimal
task-gnome-minimal
task-lxde-minimal
task-lxqt-minimal
task-mate-minimal
task-plasma5-minimal
task-xfce-minimal

Most of the desktop environments require xdg-utils, but not all of them,
such as windowmaker or fluxbox.

Most of the gui web browsers either directly, or indirectly require it,
but not all of them, such as dillo.

The text web browsers (elinks, lynx, links, etc.) do not require it.

Rather then try to satisfy all linux users, simply make xdg-utils a
requirement.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[Lew Pitcher]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2023 10:18:09 -0500, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Nov 2023 02:19:46 -0500, J.O. Aho <us...@example.net> wrote:
>> On 20/11/2023 20.18, Marco Moock wrote:
>>> Am 20.11.2023 um 10:35:12 Uhr schrieb J.O. Aho:
>>>
>>>> And then you limited to the debian family.
>>>
>>> How do other distributions handle a browser call?
>>> xdg-open?
>>
>> It's more or less the standard and it seems the at work ubuntu I have
>> also has it installed.

[snip]

> Rather then try to satisfy all linux users, simply make xdg-utils a
> requirement.

I'd suggest going another way: give the application a run-time
configuration option that defaults to xdg-utils, but can be overridden
by the user to specify the browser to use.

This way, the application defaults to using xdg-utils to launch the
user's "desktop preferred" browser, but allows the user to specify
an alternate, should xdg-utils not be installed.

Just my 2 cents worth

[Jasen Betts]

On 2023-11-20, Woozy Song <suzy...@outlook.com> wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

xdg_open filename.html

> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium' to find out
> what browser they have.
> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser is shit -
> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the BEST
> browsers, no statistics to be found.

Good!

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

[Carlos E. R.]

Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child process
taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something specific
in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I look at
firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh! Some
process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I want to
restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an amazon
tab, or something.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/22/23 05:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Sometimes (in Linux) when I notice that the processor is more loaded
> than usual, I run "top" in a terminal and see some firefox child process
> taking way more cpu than the rest. Unless I am doing something specific
> in the browser, I kill that busy process from "top". Then I look at
> firefox, and there is a tab that says something like "Gahhh! Some
> process died. you can click to restart it". Then I decide if I want to
> restart it, or leave it there. It can be a youtube tab, or an amazon
> tab, or something.

I think that's a relatively new capability when compared to Firefox's
long existence. I remember when Firefox was a single process, so doing
that would have killed everything Firefox was doing and closed the program.

Having the ability to do what you describe is nice. :-)

[Carlos E. R.]

Relatively new... somewhat, but I have already forgotten when it was a
single process or thread.


--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[J.O. Aho]

Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
ones too.

--
//Aho

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/22/23 09:23, J.O. Aho wrote:
> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
> ones too.

Nice!

Today I learned.

Do you by chance know how to do similar in Thunderbird?



Grant. . . .

[Blue-Maned_Hawk]

J.O. Aho wrote:

> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
> ones too.

Aye, dammit! Why had never i known of such a thing 'til now‽



--

[Carlos E. R.]

I think it is recent. Some other browser had this years ago, and then FF
added it too.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[J.O. Aho]

I'm not aware of a task manager that shows processes in Thunderbird and
if you search you will get mostly about tasks you plan in a "task manager".

In Firefox there is a menu option for the task manager "More Tools/Task
Manager", while Thunderbird do lack a such menu option as far as I can see.

--
//Aho

[J.O. Aho]

There is documentation that talks about it at least since version 102
(the documentation don't have anything for older versions).

Found a article at Bleeping computer from 2018 (FireFox 64) that they
had improved the task manager, so would say FireFox has had this feature
for years too.

--
//Aho

[Carlos E. R.]

Then my recollection was farther back :-)

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Paul]

The Thunderbird designers don't want you using the product
as a browser. This is why "about:about" type URLs may not
work, and perhaps the Task Manager is a member of that family.

The Thunderbird designers are perfectly happy to use the web engine
to display their "Please Donate" message, but that's about as far
as they will go with exposing "all of Firefox that hides inside".

You might be able to do something from the command line, but...
that's a stretch.

Thunderbird uses a single process, so it is "not Quantum" in terms
of that aspect of design. It doesn't have the same process isolation
as the real Firefox has. And perhaps this is why they are cautious.

Paul

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-11-23 12:17, Paul wrote:
> On 11/23/2023 2:00 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> On 2023-11-23 07:52, J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> On 22/11/2023 23.45, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>> On 2023-11-22 23:25, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
>>>>> J.O. Aho wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
>>>>>> ones too.
>>>>>
>>>>> Aye, dammit!  Why had never i known of such a thing 'til now‽
>>>>
>>>> I think it is recent. Some other browser had this years ago, and then FF added it too.
>>>>
>>>
>>> There is documentation that talks about it at least since version 102 (the documentation don't have anything for older versions).
>>>
>>> Found a article at Bleeping computer from 2018 (FireFox 64) that they had improved the task manager, so would say FireFox has had this feature for years too.
>>
>> Then my recollection was farther back :-)
>>
>
> The Thunderbird designers don't want you using the product
> as a browser. This is why "about:about" type URLs may not
> work, and perhaps the Task Manager is a member of that family.
>
> The Thunderbird designers are perfectly happy to use the web engine
> to display their "Please Donate" message, but that's about as far
> as they will go with exposing "all of Firefox that hides inside".
>
> You might be able to do something from the command line, but...
> that's a stretch.

Well, if you have gmail accounts with Oauth2 authentication, this can
pop up a dialog from gmail asking the person to login manually, and put
captchas and such.

> Thunderbird uses a single process, so it is "not Quantum" in terms
> of that aspect of design. It doesn't have the same process isolation
> as the real Firefox has. And perhaps this is why they are cautious.

And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more cpus,
TB becomes non responsive.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[J.O. Aho]

On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more cpus,
> TB becomes non responsive.

xkill works fine ;)

[Grant Taylor]

On 11/23/23 10:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
> xkill works fine 😉

On some platforms, yes.

But the power switch works on all platforms.

But you might not want to use either of them if you have other things
running that you care about.



Grant. . . .

[Carlos E. R.]

And then my search operation of an email is fruitless. The program is
not hung, it is running.

I can also ask TB to quit.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Blue-Maned_Hawk]

Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2023-11-23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more
>>> cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>
>> xkill works fine ;)
>
> And then my search operation of an email is fruitless. The program is
> not hung, it is running.

I don't think i've ever seen any claims of Thunderbird being hung.
Besides, what matters more here is whether Thunderbird is hanged.



--

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-11-24 04:37, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> On 2023-11-23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Restoring quotes:

]>>> On 2023-11-23 12:17, Paul wrote:
]
]>>>> Thunderbird uses a single process, so it is "not Quantum" in terms

]>>>> of that aspect of design. It doesn't have the same process isolation>>
]>>>> as the real Firefox has. And perhaps this is why they are cautious.

>>>

>>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more
>>>> cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>>
>>> xkill works fine ;)
>>
>> And then my search operation of an email is fruitless. The program is
>> not hung, it is running.
>
> I don't think i've ever seen any claims of Thunderbird being hung.
> Besides, what matters more here is whether Thunderbird is hanged.

No.

It is busy at 100% CPU for hours, quite unresponsive, unusable for other
things, even if I open two windows, one with the search, and the other
for normal use. It is single core, that's the problem.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

[Paul]

If the Profile has "big things in it", the runtime to process
a "big thing" makes the program appear unresponsive.

global-messages-db.sqlite could be the thing used for the search
function in THunderbird, and it's weird inside.

sqlite3 global-messages-db.sqlite .dump > ascii-version.txt

INSERT INTO conversations VALUES(4,'New problem with starting PC from sleep mode',NULL,NULL);
INSERT INTO conversations VALUES(25502,'Delete a line in BCDEDIT',NULL,NULL);

That could be part of that silly summary function when opening the first item
on a threaded section.

And according to a web page (without me trundling through the dump by hand),
it doesn't even appear to use an inverted index.

"now let’s explore a little bit the format of the database:

.tables
.schema messagesText
.schema messagesText_content

Here is the list of the tables:

attributeDefinitions
contactAttributes
contacts
conversations
conversationsText
conversationsText_content
conversationsText_segdir
conversationsText_segments
ext_mimeTypes
folderLocations
identities
messageAttributes
messages
messagesText
messagesText_content
messagesText_segdir
messagesText_segments
"

INSERT INTO messagesText_content VALUES(55,replace('Go into your Preferences right now, and disable Javascript.\n\n ...

It looks to me (not a DB expert), like searching Gloda, is basically brute force.

Paul

[MarioCCCP]

On 20/11/23 04:37, Woozy Song wrote:
> I am working on an old package that runs Firefox to display
> documentation (which is in HTML). But what if no Firefox?

here I possibly recall it was Firefox ESR (the
"institutional" long term support version).
If I enter plain firefox it does not launch anything.

> I guess I have to run a few commands like 'which chromium'

If you choose this, I would recommend giving a chance to the
more restricted "ungoogled chromium".

> to find out what browser they have.
> BTW asking search engine what is most popular linux browser
> is shit -

Dunno ... why do you bother which browser other people use ?
I mean : focus on your own preferences, there is a huge
choice of "covers" on both gecko or webkit cores
(particularly the family of the latter is growing every day)

> just returns a bunch of pages with somebody's option of the
> BEST browsers, no statistics to be found.

--
1) Resistere, resistere, resistere.
2) Se tutti pagano le tasse, le tasse le pagano tutti
MarioCPPP

[MarioCCCP]

does the above also apply to the ESR version of FF ?

[MarioCCCP]

GREEEEEAT advice !!!! Did not know of this shortcut, very
intresting indeed.

[MarioCCCP]

oh good :D I was not the only one to have never heard of it !

[MarioCCCP]

never ever dared to kill TB in my life.
(apart from the fact that it never got stuck and
unresponsive with literally a few hundred of folders).
Are operations on all those database "atomic" and resilient
to unexpected shut down ? I really dread leaving one or more
databases in a corrupted state, and would not even able to
locate which is broken, let alone that I would not be able
to repair it.
I reckon TB the most stable and mature sw ever used and was
able to survive every windows=>mint=>debian_1, 2, 3 ... etc
OS modification, always without losing one single email. The
profiles folders are like 20 GB and 100K files. TB is
"sacred" when in execution :D :D :D, since it carries along
30 years of ever growing archives. The very idea it would
someday be discontinued casts me in despair ! :D

[MarioCCCP]

On 24/11/23 04:37, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> On 2023-11-23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>
>>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more
>>>> cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>>
>>> xkill works fine ;)
>>
>> And then my search operation of an email is fruitless. The program is
>> not hung, it is running.
>
> I don't think i've ever seen any claims of Thunderbird being hung.

as a plain USER, I agree with you : 30 ys of working without
any proble.

I guess that ad admin of a server that uses it intensively
to route mail to many different users could be completely
different experience, possibly

> Besides, what matters more here is whether Thunderbird is hanged.




--

[MarioCCCP]

On 24/11/23 17:00, Paul wrote:
> On 11/23/2023 10:37 PM, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-11-23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>>>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more
>>>>> cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>>>
>>>> xkill works fine ;)
>>>
>>> And then my search operation of an email is fruitless. The program is
>>> not hung, it is running.
>>
>> I don't think i've ever seen any claims of Thunderbird being hung.
>> Besides, what matters more here is whether Thunderbird is hanged.
>
> If the Profile has "big things in it", the runtime to process
> a "big thing" makes the program appear unresponsive.
>
> global-messages-db.sqlite could be the thing used for the search
> function in THunderbird, and it's weird inside.

mine is 1,3 GB. Is it normal, large, small, or else ?
I have really a lot of folders, a dozen accounts, rather
deeply nested subfolders too. But it has remain reasonably
fast in searches even on a global scope.
Its memory footprint also is not by far comparable with
browsers (nor is CPU usage).
Maybe the different usage style of the SW reflects the
different experiences.

[J.O. Aho]

On 29/01/2024 14.47, MarioCCCP wrote:
> On 23/11/23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even being more
>>> cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>
>> xkill works fine ;)
>>
>
> never ever dared to kill TB in my life.
> (apart from the fact that it never got stuck and unresponsive with
> literally a few hundred of folders).
> Are operations on all those database "atomic" and resilient to
> unexpected shut down ?

No, but you can always repair them, take property on the folder and then
in the popup window click on "Repair Folder".
But usually when you have a TB stuck, it's past the time to write something.

> would not even able to locate which is broken, let
> alone that I would not be able to repair it.

Quite simple, when you try to enter the folder it will cast an error
message.

> I reckon TB the most stable and mature sw ever used and was able to
> survive every windows=>mint=>debian_1, 2, 3 ... etc OS modification,
> always without losing one single email.

Never loose mail when you have it on the imap server, TB is just for
reading it locally.


--
//Aho

[MarioCCCP]

On 29/01/24 17:22, J.O. Aho wrote:
> On 29/01/2024 14.47, MarioCCCP wrote:
>> On 23/11/23 17:09, J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> On 23/11/2023 13.28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>
>>>> And some operations peg the CPU at 100% for hours; even
>>>> being more cpus, TB becomes non responsive.
>>>
>>> xkill works fine ;)
>>>
>>
>> never ever dared to kill TB in my life.
>> (apart from the fact that it never got stuck and
>> unresponsive with literally a few hundred of folders).
>> Are operations on all those database "atomic" and
>> resilient to unexpected shut down ?
>
> No, but you can always repair them, take property on the
> folder and then in the popup window click on "Repair Folder".
> But usually when you have a TB stuck, it's past the time to
> write something.
>
>
>> would not even able to locate which is broken, let alone
>> that I would not be able to repair it.
>
> Quite simple, when you try to enter the folder it will cast
> an error message.

I must have explained myself bad.
I mean : I would find it difficult to associate a particular
broken folder from within TB interface to a particular
file/folder in the file system.

>
>> I reckon TB the most stable and mature sw ever used and
>> was able to survive every windows=>mint=>debian_1, 2, 3
>> ... etc OS modification, always without losing one single
>> email.
>
> Never loose mail when you have it on the imap server, TB is
> just for reading it locally.

should I have kept 20 GB of stuff on servers for 30 Years ?
Perplexed ...

[Ant]

MarioCCCP <NoliMihiFran...@libero.it> wrote:
> On 22/11/23 23:25, Blue-Maned_Hawk wrote:
> > J.O. Aho wrote:
> >
> >> Shif-Esc gives you the browser task manager, works on Chromium based
> >> ones too.
> >

> > Aye, dammit! Why had never i known of such a thing 'til now???

> >

> oh good :D I was not the only one to have never heard of it !

Me too.
--
"Then I said to you, 'Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes.'" --Deuteronomy 1:29-30. Crazy 49ers & Lions.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

[David W. Hodgins]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:17:05 -0500, MarioCCCP <NoliMihiFran...@libero.it> wrote:
> I must have explained myself bad.
> I mean : I would find it difficult to associate a particular
> broken folder from within TB interface to a particular
> file/folder in the file system.

The messages are stored in
"/home/$USER/.thunderbird/*.default/global-messages-db.sqlite", not in a file
or directory per folder.

> should I have kept 20 GB of stuff on servers for 30 Years ?
> Perplexed ...

:-)

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[J.O. Aho]

On 29/01/2024 20.17, MarioCCCP wrote:
> On 29/01/24 17:22, J.O. Aho wrote:
>> On 29/01/2024 14.47, MarioCCCP wrote:

>>> would not even able to locate which is broken, let alone that I would
>>> not be able to repair it.
>>
>> Quite simple, when you try to enter the folder it will cast an error
>> message.
>
> I must have explained myself bad.
> I mean : I would find it difficult to associate a particular broken
> folder from within TB interface to a particular file/folder in the file
> system.

A folder would just be a file with identical name as the folder, but
there is nothing you need to do on the file system as you do the repair
from the TB GUI.

>>
>>> I reckon TB the most stable and mature sw ever used and was able to
>>> survive every windows=>mint=>debian_1, 2, 3 ... etc OS modification,
>>> always without losing one single email.
>>
>> Never loose mail when you have it on the imap server, TB is just for
>> reading it locally.
>
> should I have kept 20 GB of stuff on servers for 30 Years ?

I have, sure not on the same mail server, just move the mail from one
mail server to the next. There are nice tools for that which just takes
a source email account a destination one and copies those you want to
keep. I have used imapsync with great success and I still have mail I
got when I went to University, sure I still have files from my ~/ from
that time too even if I have changed hard drives quite many times since
then.

--
//Aho

[MarioCCCP]

On 29/01/24 21:29, David W. Hodgins wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:17:05 -0500, MarioCCCP
> <NoliMihiFran...@libero.it> wrote:
>> I must have explained myself bad.
>> I mean : I would find it difficult to associate a particular
>> broken folder from within TB interface to a particular
>> file/folder in the file system.
>
> The messages are stored in
> "/home/$USER/.thunderbird/*.default/global-messages-db.sqlite", not in a file
> or directory per folder.

so why the outermost folder contains 100 K files ? I mean
100'000 individual files and subfolders. Garbage ?

>
>> should I have kept 20 GB of stuff on servers for 30 Years ?
>> Perplexed ...
>
> :-)
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

[David W. Hodgins]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 06:50:30 -0500, MarioCCCP <NoliMihiFran...@libero.it> wrote:
> On 29/01/24 21:29, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:17:05 -0500, MarioCCCP
>> <NoliMihiFran...@libero.it> wrote:
>>> I must have explained myself bad.
>>> I mean : I would find it difficult to associate a particular
>>> broken folder from within TB interface to a particular
>>> file/folder in the file system.
>>
>> The messages are stored in
>> "/home/$USER/.thunderbird/*.default/global-messages-db.sqlite", not in a file
>> or directory per folder.
>
> so why the outermost folder contains 100 K files ? I mean
> 100'000 individual files and subfolders. Garbage ?

$ ls -1 .thunderbird/|wc -l
4
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default|wc -l
91
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default/*/*|wc -l
286
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default/*/*/*|wc -l
183
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default/*/*/*/*|wc -l
60
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default/*/*/*/*/*|wc -l
13
[dave@x3 ~]$ ls -1 .thunderbird/*.default/*/*/*/*/*/*|wc -l
3

The above counts include files and directories.

You'll have to dig in the the documentation and source code for thunderbird
if you want to know what every file is used for, if it's not obvious by
viewing the file.

>>> should I have kept 20 GB of stuff on servers for 30 Years ?
>>> Perplexed ...

I mostly only use thunderbird for testing it, and when helping other people.

I normally use opera 4.16, 2021, with pop3, imap, nntp, and rss accounts.

All of the messages go into it's store directory, with one plain text file per
message.

The program is obsolete, but it still works, for what I use it for. It works
for some websites including the ones I use the most, but will not render most
other sites anymore.

I prefer to use pop3. My imap accounts are for testing only. I don't leave a copy
on the servers with the pop3 accounts.

$ tree -ifa .opera/mail/store|grep \.mbs|wc -l
319455

That's currently 3.7G of files and directories.

Those messages go back to 2005, well before I switched to linux.

I keep two hot backups of all files I consider important, and two that are only
physically connected when being updated. I don't compress my backups, as that's
one more thing that can make recovering individual files problematic.

Regards, Dave Hodgins