docs(migration): #144 — Mozilla profiles.ini, and why NOT to restore a snapshot
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A real migration (2026-07-16) lost ~/.thunderbird/profiles.ini, so
Thunderbird made an empty profile and opened it while 30 GB of mail —
19 GB ImapMail, 64 account prefs — sat in the directory it had stopped
looking at. The fix was eight lines.

MIGRATION.md already warned about this class for Chromium extensions.
The Mozilla case gets its own bullet because it is the inverse failure
and the inverse danger: Chromium silently deletes extension data and
looks minor; Thunderbird loses nothing and looks catastrophic — so the
reflex it provokes, restoring a snapshot over a good profile, is the one
thing that can actually cost you mail. The bullet therefore leads with
`ls`/`du` ("a multi-GB dir = your data is fine"), then gives the working
profiles.ini shape and the Path=/Default= semantics.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-07-16 11:41:28 +01:00
parent 207b6f3c64
commit 02ec0f10cd
3 changed files with 52 additions and 44 deletions

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@@ -449,6 +449,17 @@ Design/decision records and a running log of shipped work (items marked
(#131). Those windows therefore carry float/center rules and deliberately no
`size` rule. Measured after: calendar 1536×936 = exactly 60%×65%, doctor
1408×1008 = 55%×70%, both centred in the Waybar work area.
- ✓ **MIGRATION.md: Mozilla `profiles.ini` (#144, 2026-07-16):** a real
migration ate Bernardo's `~/.thunderbird/profiles.ini`, so Thunderbird did
what it does on any new machine — made an empty profile and opened it —
while 30 GB of mail (19 GB `ImapMail`, 64 account prefs) sat untouched in the
directory it had stopped looking at. Recovered in eight lines. Documented as
its own bullet next to the Chromium one because it is the **inverse failure**
and the inverse danger: Chromium silently deletes extension data and looks
minor; Thunderbird loses nothing and looks catastrophic — so the reflex it
provokes (restore a snapshot over a perfectly good profile) is itself the way
to actually lose mail. The doc therefore leads with `ls`/`du`, not with a
restore.
- ✓ **Ask hands off to a web chat (#140, 2026-07-16):** Bernardo: "opening
claude-code is too disruptive." SUPER+CTRL+A used to spend a terminal, an npm
fetch and a REPL on "what's the syntax for…" — the prompt was the right