Upgrade to 102 crashed (Linux)

[steve]

Hi, I am running 91.11.0 on Linux Mint 19.3 and the update manager recommended a security update thunderbird (1:102.2.2+build1-0ubuntu0.18.04.1) bionic; urgency=medium

After upgrade thunderbird displayed a transparent window and was using extremely high cpu which did not lessen after 10 minutes.
I recovered my system to a previous system backup and started thunderbird which told me that my profile (updated by the new version, was not compatible with the current version (91).
I recovered the situation by running with the allow-downgrade option, but why doesn't Thunderbird make a backup of the old profile before updating it?

But my main question is how to upgrade from 91 to 102?

Many thanks in advance

Steve

[DanRaisch]

Try updating using a package from Mozilla rather than from the Linux repository -- https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

[tanstaafl]

"but why doesn't Thunderbird make a backup of the old profile before updating it?"

Probably because many people would complain about the wasted space, the automated update usually succeeds and you have the option to delay making a update until you've manually backed up the profile.

"my main question is how to upgrade from 91 to 102?"

Try uninstalling the current Thunderbird package and installing the latest one (not a patch/update) in the exact same location. Uninstalling shouldn't delete your profile unless you check the checkbox to delete all of your data.

Its easier to stay up-to-date with the Mozilla generic Linux builds (what Dan suggested). The latest version is 102.3.1. It uses a different directory for profiles.ini and the default location for profiles so you'd probably want to copy the old profiles.ini over it.

[steve]

DanRaisch, thanks for your reply. I'm not convinced it's a problem with the build in the repo, rather I think it's either a bug in Thunderbird, which may be fixed in the latest or later releases which is struggling with my configuration of 6 email accounts, all imap, one google imap, very large inboxes and auto compact.

[steve]

tanstaafl thank you. I may have to do that, but the last time I did something similar, Thunderbird re-synced and re-downloaded all my emails even though they were all there and it took ages.

[wsmwk]

Steve, please post your results of doing https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tr ... hunderbird, and also restart again.