Hello,
1st issue:
after updating TBird yesterday (as ADMIN), my key address book is off the list of TBird :=(
when logged in as USER.
If I log in as ADMIN, the book begins to show up and things look as if they are rebuild.
After waiting until that has finished, then re-login as USER, still the GenSyncAdressBook
is gone.
2nd issue:
GenSync_Cal shows as empty if I log in as USER, the normal case.
I wish I had not updated TBird ... :=( :=(
Can anybody help, PLEASE !
BR Joachim
after updating TBird yesterday (as ADMIN), my key address book is off the list of TBird :=(
when logged in as USER.
If I log in as ADMIN, the book begins to show up and things look as if they are rebuild.[...]
GenSync_Cal shows as empty if I log in as USER, the normal case.
Sounds like either something is damaged or inaccessible for regular users.
To solve this issue, first create a backup to make sure not to loose any data on accident. You can then try to reset the right part of Thunderbird, depending on how you started Thunderbird as admin:
If you are not using the same Thunderbird profile when logged in as admin, there is likely some issue only affecting GeneralSync's data files within the Thunderbird profile. In this case, the problem should go away by re-creating all GeneralSync data. To do that, open Thunderbird's add-on settings ("Menu | Add-ons" or "Menubar | Tools | Add-ons") and navigate to "GeneralSync Integration". In its settings, click the button "Reset connection with GeneralSync". Then wait while data is rebuilt. During the process, settings specific to this particular Thunderbird instance will get reset, such as calendar colors and associations with email addresses. Write them down beforehand!
If you are using the same Thunderbird profile when logged in as admin, it is likely corrupted due to a permission issue. For example, some essential files could be owned by the admin now, causing corruption when attempting to use the profile as regular user that can't access them. In this case, you might get lucky when manually re-claiming ownership over your Thunderbird profile (and potentially resetting GeneralSync data as suggested above); if not, restore a backup. You can find more information on where Thunderbird profiles are and what they do at Thunderbird's support page.
Thanks for your suggestions, Mr. Steinmetz !
I have different profiles for (ADMIN, USER).
Because the GenSync elements (address book, sync'd Calendar) were working under ADMIN I came up
with the idea to change the USER account to type ADMIN and have a try.
The result is hard to believe: now BOTH accounts lost all GenSync books (address, calendar).
What a nitemare. In both TBird's profile folders there no longer are any abook.map, not even abook.map.bak.
Only these SQL related abook files are still there ..
I have abook, abook-1 and abook-2 in both profiles. I will study TBird what this means.
I did a full backup of the machine just two days ago.
In which file sits the GenSync address book ?
Same Q for the GenSync Calendar.
THANK YOU.
Frustrated Greetings - Joachim
I have different profiles for (ADMIN, USER).
Did you try the suggested option ("Reset connection with GeneralSync")? If so, what happened?
If that operation fails to restore all calendars and address books, please press Ctrl+Shift+J in Thunderbird's main window. A new window appears ("error console"), which should have more detailed error messages (you might need to scroll down). If you are not sure which messages apply, keep the error console open and click on the button again, then observe what messages were added.
In which file sits the GenSync address book ?
Same Q for the GenSync Calendar.
I strongly recommend to never attempt to restore only a single address book or calendar. You should never have to touch individual files in the Thunderbird profile or GeneralSync's data folder. But to answer the question: the master copy of all GeneralSync data is bundled with settings and metadata in %APPDATA%\GeneralSync\storage.db (on Windows) or ~/.local/share/GeneralSync/storage.db (on Linux). In addition, each application holds copies in its own format to speed up access. In Thunderbird, these copies are placed in the profile and referenced from other parts of the profile (generalsync-AddressBook-*.sqlite and generalsync-calendars.sqlite; *.mab files are no longer used).
There are many counter-intuitive aspects in how data is stored, so the only safe thing to do is to replacing a whole profile and optionally also GeneralSync's data folder (use "Reset connection with GeneralSync" afterwards if you did not also restore GeneralSync's data).
Thanks again for your support !
I now have a backup version of users/xxx/appdata/roaming/thunderbird at hand. There also are no abook-x.mab files there ... can this be legal ?? The backup was done right after I updated Tbird from V. 78.14.0 to
V. 91.2.1. I wish I never did this update :=( :=(
So, I am unsure if that backup holds a good status.
Anyway, if I request the installed GeneralSync Integration 2.1.0.1 to "Reset connection with GeneralSync"
then -- nothing happens. A minute later the TBird error console shows the following messages. Only the very last one seems to be caused by me pressing that button:
NotFoundError: WindowGlobalChild.getActor: No such JSWindowActor 'Conduits' ExtensionCommon.jsm:510
NotFoundError: WindowGlobalChild.getActor: No such JSWindowActor 'Conduits' ExtensionCommon.jsm:510
Unexpected event profile-after-change URLQueryStrippingListService.jsm:224
Unknown Collection "thunderbird/query-stripping" RemoteSettingsClient.jsm:160
Successfully loaded OpenPGP library rnp.dll version 0.15.2+git20210806.dd923a4e.MZLA from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\rnp.dll RNPLib.jsm:92:15
Found 0 public keys and 0 secret keys (0 protected, 0 unprotected) RNPLib.jsm:288:15
[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80520001 (NS_ERROR_FILE_UNRECOGNIZED_PATH) [nsIXPCComponents_Utils.readUTF8URI]" nsresult: "0x80520001 (NS_ERROR_FILE_UNRECOGNIZED_PATH)" location: "JS frame :: resource://gre/modules/L10nRegistry.jsm :: L10nRegistry.loadSync :: line 692" data: no] L10nRegistry.jsm:692:19
Trying to load C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\libotr.dll OTRLib.jsm:64:11
Successfully loaded OTR library C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\libotr.dll OTRLib.jsm:72:13
Network is offline RemoteSettingsClient.jsm:130
1635286274774 Toolkit.Telemetry WARN TelemetryStorage::_scanArchive - have seen this id before: a5d49b75-4b77-44c9-868b-c936c18a2577, overwrite: false
NS_ERROR_MALFORMED_URI: Unexpected uri: generalsync:AddressBook.4d04ffb6-e3a4-4fad-b438-32fb2f620874 AddrBookManager.jsm:217
I am very sorry for eventually causing you extra work. I did nothing different from all the many updates to reach V. 78 ... what a nitemare.
Most friendly greetings - Joachim
There also are no abook-x.mab files there ... can this be legal
As I said, *.mab files are no longer used by recent versions of Thunderbird (neither on 78 or 91!). Any files you might see with that extension are backups left over from previous versions, to permit data recovery if something should go wrong during migration. It is perfectly normal to not have any *.mab files.
NS_ERROR_MALFORMED_URI: Unexpected uri: generalsync:AddressBook.4d04ffb6-e3a4-4fad-b438-32fb2f620874 AddrBookManager.jsm:217
To confirm: you get one instance of this message after each time you click the reset button? That is really weird. It seems like some parts of the GeneralSync add-on are not registered at the time that warning is displayed. I just tested your exact version combination on both Windows and Linux and cannot reproduce the problem.
Do you have other add-ons installed? If so, which ones? Did you try disabling all other add-ons and restarting Thunderbird afterwards?
Can you also try a clean Thunderbird profile, where you manually install the GeneralSync add-on to test if it works on its own?
Edit: This might be Thunderbird bug 1732515, which seems to be related to offline mode. Does disabling offline mode (always start online) in Thunderbird's preferences change anything?
Sorry, I overlooked your comment on the old .mab stuff.
The NS_ERROR_MALFORMED_URI: I could not reproduce with each press, even if I waited multiple minutes after each.
Yes, I tried all these things: kill all Plugins. Re-install only GenSync from file.Try online and offline mode.
Nothing did help.
BTW, I also tried the same with OPTOs V.1.5 "Compatibilitäts-Tester". It also does nothing
when used in my default profile ...
But now the good news: indeed the matter seems to have to do with my "hundred times updated" default profile.
I used Profile Mngr and created new profile "test". Installed GeneralSyncIntegrationTB_2.1.0.1.xpi. And yes,
immediately and extensively the rebuild process did start automatically. So in "test" I see all my goodies again ! Hurra so far.
But my problem now has reshaped:
- in the "old" default profile, all other things (old address books, mail) work. The wonderful GenSync stuff
is missing
- in the test profile, things are incomplete vice versa
:=( :=( :=(
!§$%&/ !!! How to solve that. I predict I have a lot to read on TBird's support pages. I hope you can give a few hints for that.
Many many thanks again for your support !! I hope you do not get tired so we all can enjoy GenSync for many more years. All the best wishes for you and your family ! Joachim
I used Profile Mngr and created new profile "test". Installed GeneralSyncIntegrationTB_2.1.0.1.xpi. And yes,
immediately and extensively the rebuild process did start automatically. So in "test" I see all my goodies again !
Ok, so we now know that there is some kind of issue with your old profile. That sadly makes it hard for me to test it (as profile-related issues are hard to reproduce without having access to a "broken" profile).
So while we could go on in trying to fix your old profile, I suspect it will be a lot less work to just set up your new profile in the way you want it. After all, everything (including address books and mails) should already work there, just your data and configuration are missing at the moment. You mentioned using other local address books and mail, so I will only cover these two areas here:
For local, non-GeneralSync address books: you can either use the official im- and export features of Thunderbird (csv contains everything except images and chat names and seems to work reliably in my short test) or create the same number of new address books and overwrite the abook*.sqlite sqlite files (this will replace the address book contents, but will not break references. It is absolutely essential to only overwrite existing files and not change anything else!).
For mail using IMAP, just add your mail accounts again. As mails are stored on the server, there is nothing to migrate!
For mail using POP3, add your mail accounts and remember to never again start your old profile (POP emails might only be downloaded once, depending on your settings: receiving mail with the old profile potentially prevents the new profile from ever getting it). You will need to migrate your mail as explained below.
For mail stored in the profile (local folders, POP3), import mails out of the old profile's "Mail" folder using the ImportExportTools NG add-on. Once installed, you can start importing by right-clicking on the a mail folder in Thunderbird and selecting one of the new options.
Keep your old profile as a backup in case you missed something when importing.
I am up and running again in the new "test" profile, after filling in 4 local address books (abook-x.sqlite)
per method above and after copying the complete local eMail structure (I purposely use only POP3/SMTP).
Just to mention, ImportExportTools NG V.11 did NOT do the job: during import it somehow converted the *.sbd files in my MAIL folder to extension-less entities, which I imagine are MBox entities. The new profile did nothing with those. Also, even though I had ticked "create index files during import" that did not happen.
To get the complete eMail structure into the new profile I used the same "trick" as for the abook-x:
- define at least one eMail account inside the new profile. As a side effect, a subdir "Local Folders"
in MAIL is created
- then copy the total content of subdir "Local Folders" out of the MAIL directory of the broken profile.
Thanks again for your great support, Mr. Steinmetz !
Just to mention, ImportExportTools NG V.11 did NOT do the job: during import it somehow converted the *.sbd files in my MAIL folder to extension-less entities
Normally, *.sbd should be folders (containing the subfolders within a Thunderbird folder), not files. In my tests with a dummy POP profile the add-on did work as expected, so I recommended that approach as it is less error-prone than editing the profile by hand and should work even if your profiles use different methods to store mails.
Happy to hear that copying your structure still worked out for you, though. 
For address books, I just realized I missed one aspect when using the sqlite method: you might also need to copy the photos from the "Photos" folder contained within the original profile. Otherwise, contact photos might not get displayed for the migrated local address books. As the "Photos" folder also contains photos for non-local address books, copying everything might lead to duplicates in other address books, though (other than taking up a tiny bit of space these duplicates are harmless).
Thanks for reporting back and sorry for the inconvenience!
Thanks again and all the best wishes for you and your family !
I strongly believe GenSync was NOT the cause of my trouble.
Because other correctly versioned plugins also stopped working.
I can only hope you do not give up this great project, and manage to go after all your moving targets without getting (too) tired.
Friendly greetings ! Joachim R.
P.S. I am old school. No Photos inside a mail system !
