Thunderbird Profile Size

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loneswimmer
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Joined: July 4th, 2013, 11:21 am

Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by loneswimmer »

I have Thunderbird installed on my PC and laptop and use a syncrhonising application to sync the profile folder between the machines.

However, this is taking far too long as the profile folder is now 5GB.

The sync program only syncs *changed* files. So I thought I would create sub-folders on each mail account and transfer the read mail to that. However, even if I make no changes (add mails etc.) to the sub-folders, it seems they are still somehow changed as the whole 5GB is still synced.

Is there a way around this? If I can only sync folders which have new mail or other changes it should be very quick.

Thanks for any advice.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by DanRaisch »

How is the account set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP? Find out using menu path Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by tanstaafl »

"However, even if I make no changes (add mails etc.) to the sub-folders, it seems they are still somehow changed as the whole 5GB is still synced."

I suggest you save a directory listing of the profile that shows the size and time/date of each file in the desktops profile. Then repeat a day later and compare the two listings to see what files have changed.

Is your sync program bidirectional? Its possible its also synchronizing files due to changes in the laptops profile, not the desktops profile. Or it could be a very dumb program if its always syncing every file, not just your mail. I'd expect many days none of your address books, message filters, stored passwords or add-ons would be modified for example.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Synchronizing ... _computers for some suggestions on programs to sync files between two computers.
loneswimmer
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by loneswimmer »

All are POP3.

Yes, the sync is bidirectional, and it is Goodsync which I think is pretty clever - it can even detect name changes on otherwise identical files and merely change the name/path. I have not experienced this issue on any other files other than the Thunderbird profile.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by tanstaafl »

If its a scheduled sync (rather than real time) I believe you have to specify what directories it should sync. If you specify the root of the profile as a folder to sync I assume that would sync (everything that changes in) the entire profile unless you explicitly unlisted some of the child folders per the FAQ. The FAQ says: "If either file modification time or its size has changed then GoodSync assumes that file has changed." If its syncing the entire profile every single time I'd suspect some other process (than Thunderbird) is modifying the files in the profile. Could your security or anti-virus software be doing that?

Does the following help? You might experiment with it on a handful of files.

This is how to tell GoodSync not to resync files that are already in sync, except for their file mod time:
- Perform Analyze
- Select Other -> SameLength DiffTime to view file with same length and different file modification time,
- Right-click middle of the Top node in the tree and select Copy Time L to R or R to L .
- Sync: only file modification time will be copied in the selected direction, not file bodies.
OZO
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by OZO »

Try to separate files that you need to synchronize from those that you don't. E.g. configuration files and your mails are important, while caches are not.

I've just checked my profile folder and it contains 25 MiB. It doesn't include my mails, because I keep all my mails in a different folder specifically for the purpose of backing them up separately, as it's important. At this time caches take 17 MiB of that profile folder. Obviously there is no much sense to synchronize (or backup) them...

Bottom line - you have to sync only configuration files and mails and not caches or other temporary files, TB produces for its own work.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by tanstaafl »

OZO
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by OZO »

Thank you @tanstaafl. It's helpful :)
loneswimmer
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by loneswimmer »

Thanks for the replies. What exactly is the "cache" - what is Thunderbird cacheing, and is there a way to clear it if not needed?

Setting Goodsync to only sync certain files in the profile could be difficult as if anything else were to change it would be missed. Similarly if I were to store the mail outside the profile as per Ozo's suggestion, then things like extensions etc. wouldn't be synched between the machines.

I will have to try to find out what is causing these folders to change. Is there a clear way to identify which folder in the profile corresponds to which mail account? Each mail account has a name (the email address) but TB seems to have created folders based not on that but the pop3 server name (which is the same for several of the accounts, making it difficult to tell which corresponds to which).
loneswimmer
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by loneswimmer »

OK have figured out the cache, but it was only 13Mb so no real saving there :(
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Profile Size

Post by tanstaafl »

As a minimum you want to sync the prefs.js (settings), *.mab (address books) and the mbox files (named after the folder, have no file extension, and store the messages). However, my impression was that goodsync only lets you configure directories, not files, to sync. While you could skip the cache, cache2, crashes, datareporting, offlinecache, minidumps, storage, webapps and extensions directories that really wouldn't gain you much. That's small compared to your overall profile size and most of it is relatively constant if you configure a small cache.

I suggest you focus on figuring out why goodsync syncs unchanged mail folders unnecessarily. The FAQ talks about being able to disable syncs based on timedatestamps though its not clear to me whether thats really disabling it or just telling it to synch the other file to have the same timedatestamp if its different, but has the same length.

https://www.goodsync.com/how-to-sync-mo ... bird-files
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