profiles.ini

[[-WallyGator-]]

Hi,

I know that I can start TB with the -profile command-line parameter to tell TB the location of the profile to be opened.

But what I am looking for is the way to tell TB (in Windows) (with a command-line parameter) the location of the profiles.ini because I want it in another location then %APPDATA%

[DanRaisch]

According to the Knowledge Base article on running from a USB drive:

The -profile "path" command line argument to specify the location of the profile. It's used to run Thunderbird with the specified profile regardless of whether the Profile Manager knows about that profile's existence. It's described in more detail in the writeup on USB drive support but it does not require a USB drive. Its useful if you're a roaming user or Thunderbird somehow lost track of your profile (perhaps due to your system crashing) and you want to verify the profile is still good before trying to fix the problem. Example: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -profile e:\my_profile will launch Thunderbird with the profile stored at e:\my_profile. A quick sanity check is that e:\my_profile should contain your prefs.js file.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Running_from_ ... derbird%29

[[-WallyGator-]]

Indeed, that's related to the first sentence of my question but not what I'm looking for

[DanRaisch]

Have you tried it? The statement that "It's used to run Thunderbird with the specified profile regardless of whether the Profile Manager knows about that profile's existence" seem to say that identifying the location of the profiles.ini file would not be necessary.
On the other hand, why do you want to "tell TB (in Windows) (with a command-line parameter) the location of the profiles.ini" if it doesn't need to know that?

[[-WallyGator-]]

Yes, I have used that in the past.
I have different profiles which are specified in the profiles.ini.
I want to have that profiles.ini at another location.

[tanstaafl]

AFAIK you can't specify a different location for profiles.ini by configuring Thunderbird or using command line arguments. Thunderbird is hard coded to expect that file to be in a specific location on your boot drive.

If you want profiles.ini to be in a different location you'd have to do that by a symbolic link were you use a program such as mklink to tell the operating system to pretend that a file is at a specific location even though its elsewhere. That is completely transparent to Thunderbird. There are two types of symbolic links - soft and hard. In your case you'd probably want a hard link. See https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/c ... -or-linux/ or https://www.thewindowsclub.com/create-s ... windows-10 for more information.

What you can do via Thunderbird is configure profiles.ini to have profiles almost anywhere you want, or have it ignore profiles.ini and specify the profile to use via a command line argument.

What problem are you trying to solve by moving the location of profiles.ini? You can do that via a hard link but it also makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. Do you want to do this to make it easier to troubleshoot by using different profiles for example? See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager in that case.

[[-WallyGator-]]

I want to use TB as portable, with profiles.ini (with multiple profiles in it) being part of the portable-setup (meaning not in %APPDATA%)

[morat]

Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/ ... d_portable

[tanstaafl]

I want to use TB as portable, with profiles.ini (with multiple profiles in it) being part of the portable-setup (meaning not in %APPDATA%)

Portable Thunderbird doesn't use profiles.ini. However, the real benefit of Portable Thunderbird is not that it doesn't use profiles.ini, its that it doesn't install anything on the PC/laptop. Everything resides on the flash drive.

https://portableapps.com/support/thunde ... nd_profile
https://portableapps.com/support/thunderbird_portable

"To use a second profile, install the Thunderbird Portable 2nd Profile 2.0 app in the same PortableApps directory that ThunderbirdPortable is in (so, if Thunderbird Portable is installed to X:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable, you'd install this to X:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable2ndProfile). In the PortableApps.com Menu, it will show up as "Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 2nd Profile". You can easily rename it to something more useful by right-clicking and selecting rename. When you run it, it will start Thunderbird Portable up with your second profile without affecting your main profile. You can even install a 3rd or 4th profile by installing the 2nd Profile app again to another location (like X:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable2ndProfile_Copy_1 so the platform will automatically update it) and then renaming it in the PortableApps.com Menu."

[morat]

Thunderbird Portable creates the following folders.

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\updates
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Pending Pings

AFAIK, there is no way to stop the app from doing that.

[tanstaafl]

The latest version might also have a crash reports directory in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\ since the normal Thunderbird does.

I haven't looked at Portable Thunderbird for a long time. I suspect the extra directories are due to changes in Gecko that the author thinks its not worth dealing with .