Using a symlink (or junction) to relocate TB profile on Windows 7

[Wayne]

Does anyone have experience with this, or advice for me?

--
Wayne

[Poutnik]

In article <ya2dnQ5qoN1Vsz7Q...@mozilla.org>,
nos...@all.invalid says...

>
> Does anyone have experience with this, or advice for me?

IMHO better alternative is
to move profile and set a new path in TB profiles.ini
The same applies to Firefox.

--
Poutnik

[Matt]

On 12/04/2011 2:09 AM, Wayne wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with this, or advice for me?
>

No experience, but it should work, the OS reports it as a real location
hence Thunderbird should have no idea if it is here or there, it is just
a path to data.

Matt

[Poutnik]

In article <QZydnYvUnP-NsTHQ...@mozilla.org>,
unicorn.c...@gmail.com says...

I would say moving profile elsewhere ( at closed TB )
and modifying TB profiles.ini is better approach.

--
Poutnik

[goodwin]

a symlink won't work - Tbird doesn't look to the OS for its profile
location - it looks at the profiles.ini file.
I don't know what junction refers to.

[Poutnik]

In article <3pCdnQohAunXxzHQ...@mozilla.org>,
conn...@cox.net says...

I see no reason why folder symlinks ( Vista and Win 7 )
should not work, even if I prefer profiles.ini modification here.

They are more or less like folder symbolic links in UNIX,
implemented on filesystem level.

junction can be created even on XP,
e.g. by sysinternals jucntion utility.
There is difference in junction and symlinkd functionality,
but their usage for average user can be taken as same.

If profiles.ini states the profile is in c:\longpath\folder,
but the "folder" is in fact symlinkd or junction
to c:\shortpass\MyTBprofile

then everything TB thinks writing to c:\longpath\folder
is written to c:\shortpass\MyTBprofile instead.
Or, said by other words, content of
real folder c:\shortpass\MyTBprofile
and linked folder c:\longpath\folder
is always the same,
being just 2 pointers to the same structure.

See also OS mklink utility,
e.g. here http://ss64.com/nt/mklink.html

--
Poutnik

[Ralph Fox]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:35:39 -0700, in message
news://news.mozilla.org/3pCdnQohAunXxzHQ...@mozilla.org
goodwin wrote:

> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110114 Thunderbird/3.3a2

>
> a symlink won't work - Tbird doesn't look to the OS for its profile
> location - it looks at the profiles.ini file.

The idea is that profiles.ini says the profile location is ABC, and ABC
is actually a symlink to (say) XYZ.

Using a symlink does not require T'Bird to look to the OS for its
profile location.

As a reminder of what a symlink is: In Linux, to create a symlink ABC
pointing to XYZ you can use
ln -s XYZ ABC

> I don't know what junction refers to.

What Linux calls a "mount point".

--
Kind regards
Ralph Fox

[goodwin]

On 04/18/2011 01:21 PM, Ralph Fox wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:35:39 -0700, in message
> news://news.mozilla.org/3pCdnQohAunXxzHQ...@mozilla.org
> goodwin wrote:
>
>> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110114
>> Thunderbird/3.3a2
>>
>> a symlink won't work - Tbird doesn't look to the OS for its profile
>> location - it looks at the profiles.ini file.
>
> The idea is that profiles.ini says the profile location is ABC, and ABC
> is actually a symlink to (say) XYZ.

I see where you are going here, and I sit corrected on symlinks but it
took me a minute to grasp this.

>
> Using a symlink does not require T'Bird to look to the OS for its
> profile location.
>

> As a reminder of what a symlink is: In Linux, to create a symlink ABC
> pointing to XYZ you can use
> ln -s XYZ ABC
>

OK, but I would just enter the location in profiles.ini directly - I've
never felt comfortable with symlinks, having been introduced to them
late in life. I never used them in windows...

>
>> I don't know what junction refers to.
>
> What Linux calls a "mount point".
>
>

Thanks for the lesson :)