I think I'm closer to understanding why Thunderbird hangs in the
composition window because Betterbird just did the same thing now!
https://i.postimg.cc/cCFV7ZHy/tbhanging.jpg

It's too long of a story, months in the making, where a quick summary is
that I gave up forever on Thunderbird because it was unusable in
composition windows and moved to Betterbird which worked fine for weeks.

Even though my Gmail storage has been at the 15GB limit for months now.
https://i.postimg.cc/1tcZWMnR/compact.jpg

Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
https://i.postimg.cc/85bqd59j/bbhung.jpg

It seems Mozilla developers haven't fully tested their compaction process.
At least it seems they never tested it with an almost full Gmail account.

I don't remember if compacting caused the TB hang but it caused it for BB.

Given that both Thunderbird & Betterbird compaction causes the composition
window to hang every time thereafter, I need to fix this problem pronto.

Is there an easy way to un-compact a Thunderbird/Betterbird installation?

mike wrote:

> today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.

Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox? Have you thought about creating
folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and moving/archiving stuff
out of the mailbox into there?

On 5/2/23 14:00, this is what Andy Burns wrote:
> mike wrote:
>
>> today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
>
> Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox?  Have you thought about creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage,
> and moving/archiving stuff out of the mailbox into there?
>
>
Empty the trash on the web email app for google.

--
Al

On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:

> Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.

Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)

If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
why would you even *think* of doing that ?

First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.

The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
but this may have been based on some assumptions about
the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
absolute limits of what RAM they could access. The real
limit on a 32-bit version, is likely to be lower. It could
be that 32-bit pointers are used in there, but I don't know
if they use pointers in this case.

In any case, working with a 15GB box, is likely to require
15GB+ of RAM at some point. This is why I refer to your
configuration as that "case of dynamite" -- it's just
asking for trouble. A small computer, is just going to jam up.

*******

Remember, it's going to take *at least* 15GB of RAM
to open that sucker. Plus all the RAM I didn't count,
whatever support RAM it needs.

The box consists of two files. One file is "auto-generated"
if you "lost the file", but if you regenerate the .msf, things
like delete flags might be missing.

You can see the Inbox has some flags at the message level, but
I don't know what those do, or if they are a complete set.

Inbox <=== MBOX format ? Might be portable

From - Tue May 28 16:07:19 2019
X-Account-Key: account1
X-UIDL: 1
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 \___ Status flags that need to survive
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 / "Mork incidents" can be stored here.
X-Mozilla-Keys:
Return-Path: bullwinkle@mail.local
Received: from [127.0.0.1] (mail.local [127.0.0.1])
by localhost with ESMTPA
; Tue, 28 May 2019 16:07:07 -0400
To: bullwinkle@mail.local
From: Bull Winkle <bullwinkle@mail.local>
Subject: This is one of those tests

*******

The MSF is the Mork database ("index") to the MBOX.
It's a smaller file, with mostly the header of messages.
You can at least expect headers in here. (There could be
bodies, in Offline cases, but that's irrelevant to this answer.)

Mork format, is a database. That's why it has a schema. If dumped,
this info might be presented in columns. I have removed most of the
techie bits, so your eyeballs won't explode.

Inbox.msf

// <!-- <mdb:mork:z v="1.4"/> -->
< <(a=c)> // (f=iso-8859-1)
(B8=sortColumns)(B9=customSortCol)(BA=retainBy)(BB=daysToKeepHdrs) <=== schema
(BC=numHdrsToKeep)(BD=daysToKeepBodies)(BE=useServerDefaults)
....
(B6=columnStates)(B7=MRUTime)>
<(80=1)(98=fffffffe)(93=5ced94ea)(81=0)>
[1:m(^9C=1)(^90^98)(^92^93)(^91=0)(^93=1)(^94=0)]
....

<(8C=45)(8D=Bull Winkle <bullwinkle@mail.local>)(8E=bullwinkle@mail.local)
(8F=This is one of those tests)(90
=1bd1de9f-1d1d-2c69-f089-9730a78ee81f@mail.local)(91=account1)(92
=5ced94eb)(94=utf-8)(95=34b)(97=ffffffff)(F8=13|bullwinkle@mail.local)

One of the bytes at the messages level (like "45"), can represent
the "deleted flag". I might have posted a message before, about
which byte that is.

*******

When you use the GUI and you read a message and then "delete it",
the .msf merely flips one byte, indicating the new message status.

No space is saved at that time. Flipping the delete byte says
"we will fix this, on some rainy day".

When you allow "compact" to run, the Inbox can be re-written.
This means, in your case, there needs to be room for a 15GB
temporary file. The Inbox is copied, the deleted messages
are not copied. Now, the output file is 14GB in size.
This assumes you actually flagged some messages for future
deletion (during compaction).

The Inbox.msf, no longer needs those headers either.
The header that said "delete', that item can be removed
in a similar way. When you compact, the four lines in the
example with the "bull Winkle" in it, that gets removed
from the .msf.

*******

You're asking a lot of a tool, to process a file
which is, um, "bigger than the specification". Using
the 64-bit Thunderbird, you *can* try to work on it.

You would need, something like a 32GB machine, to
have a decent chance of working on that problem.

And, be patient. Mork is a *text* format. Text lexers suck.
Because they work, one byte at a time. Our university
professor at work, she knew how to write fast lexers
that did better than that. The difference between her
"best" lexer and the byte-at-a-time version, was 100x speedup.

Imagine you are working on 15,000,000,000 bytes, and
the lexer processes just 1 byte at a time. How many
hours is that ??? Etc. Be patient. If you were
a farmer, we would tell you to "use the right fertilizer".
Don't use a too-small machine for this. it might just
jam up and never complete.

*******

In Windows, open Task Manager. Where the column headers
are in "Details" tab, right-click and select the
"Select Columns" option. Add to the columns in your display

I/O read bytes
I/O write bytes

When the write byte indicator approaches 15GB, your
compaction will be almost done. This is one of the means
I use to determine how far along a compute job has got.
Byte counts. I don't know exactly how many bytes will be
written, but it will be "a lot" :-) The memory consumption
will be gluttonous.

Once you compact a (inbox, inbox.msf), you cannot uncompact it.
the excess info is now GONE. You could use Recuva, and try
and undelete it, and that would bring back the previous inbox,
but the odds of the file having a green status, are pretty low.
If you use Recuva, save the output of the tool, to another
partition, not to the damaged partition.

With a box that big, OF COURSE you would make backups. Right?

Paul

On 5/2/2023 3:01 PM, Big Al wrote:
> On 5/2/23 14:00, this is what Andy Burns wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>
>>> today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
>>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
>>> prior.
>>
>> Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox?  Have you thought about
>> creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and
>> moving/archiving stuff out of the mailbox into there?
>>
>>
> Empty the trash on the web email app for google.
>
>
In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
that fit your interest. ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc. Or school, work,
country club, etc. Add additional subfolders in the primary folder, to
further organize your letters.
While it makes Thunderbird run faster, it makes finding thing on the
Window hard drive and it Thunderbird.

Read this article
https://www.data.cam.ac.uk/data-management-guide/organising-your-data

On 02-05-2023 23:30 Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

>> today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
>
> Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox? Have you thought about creating
> folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and moving/archiving stuff
> out of the mailbox into there?

The problem is thunderbird/betterbird, not Gmail.
The Firefox GMail works just fine (which is why they're cc'd on this).

It's just the Mozilla TB/BB which was never tested in real life situations.
But to answer your GMail question, I do not organize my email in any way.

I started with GMail when you still needed invitations and just kept it the
way it was, LIFO, but even if I move stuff around, isn't the 15GB limit
still in force? (It doesn't go away if you move stuff around, does it?)

I want to keep all my mail on the Google servers if I can, in case I ever
need it in the future, so if I use "local storage", isn't that equivalent,
in terms of the chance of losing your data when the disk crashes, the same
essentially as POP?

If I wanted my mail to be local, I would have set it up as POP for example.
But I don't want my mail to be local.
Then I have to worry about losing it and to prevent that, backing it up.

Google already backs up all my email for me. So I let them do that.
Anyway, the question is how to UN-compact Thunderbird/Betterbird.

I think I figured out a way given I had taken people up on their suggestion
to use portable thunderbird/betterbird and to put the "profile" inside the
same folder (which is the default setup).

I just now renamed the profile folder and let it start over.
It's MUCH easier, by the way, _because_ it's portable. So that's a boon!

I will never install Thunderbird/Betterbird any way ever again other than
portable. I didn't know how deliciously easier it is to work with it as a
portable app versus being installed all over the file system instead.

Anyway, BB is still downloading all the mail but I can send compositions
again, but I had to bring over the abook.sqlite from the old profile.

I may switch back to TB because now I know that the bug is in both the TB
and in the BB compaction process, but really, why bother to switch back?

BB is almost undistinguishable from TB in very way that I've been using it.

I need to be careful to state that BB isn't done re-loading all my email,
so I was just answering your question about GMail for this post just now.

On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
> that fit your interest. ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc. Or school, work,
> country club, etc. Add additional subfolders in the primary folder, to
> further organize your letters.

The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the folders
on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail server?

My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.

Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.

When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the local
machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google servers.

Doesn't it?

Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.

I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.

I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?

On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:
> On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
>> that fit your interest.  ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.   Or school,
>> work, country club, etc.  Add additional subfolders in the primary
>> folder, to further organize your letters.
>
> The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the folders
> on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail server?
>
> My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
> folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.
>
> Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
> even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
>
> When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the local
> machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google servers.
>
> Doesn't it?
>
> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
> I don't want that.

Yes, it does.

And it tries to sync the local disk storage with the remote server,
which takes looooooooooooooooong.

And if you have everything in the inbox, it gets worse.

> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>
> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?

I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.

I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
locally, in more than one computer.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2023-05-02 21:34, mike wrote:
> On 02-05-2023 23:30 Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>
>>> today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
>>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
>>> prior.
>>
>> Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox?  Have you thought about
>> creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and
>> moving/archiving stuff out of the mailbox into there?
>
> The problem is thunderbird/betterbird, not Gmail.
> The Firefox GMail works just fine (which is why they're cc'd on this).
>
> It's just the Mozilla TB/BB which was never tested in real life situations.
> But to answer your GMail question, I do not organize my email in any way.
>
> I started with GMail when you still needed invitations and just kept it the
> way it was, LIFO, but even if I move stuff around, isn't the 15GB limit
> still in force? (It doesn't go away if you move stuff around, does it?)

But each folder that TH opened would be much smaller and easier to keep
in sync.

> I want to keep all my mail on the Google servers if I can, in case I ever
> need it in the future, so if I use "local storage", isn't that equivalent,
> in terms of the chance of losing your data when the disk crashes, the same
> essentially as POP?

Don't ever use POP.

>
> If I wanted my mail to be local, I would have set it up as POP for example.

No.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2023-05-02 21:25, Paul wrote:
> On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
>
>> Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird
>> became
>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
>> prior.
>
> Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
>
> If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
> why would you even *think* of doing that ?
>
> First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
> 64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
>
> The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
> but this may have been based on some assumptions about
> the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
> absolute limits of what RAM they could access.

Or FAT filesystem per file limit.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.

mike wrote:

[snip]

>
> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
> I don't want that.
>
> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>
> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?

A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
all the email from your server.

Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from
the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all
the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
delete some or all of them.

The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been
vital - perhaps now rather less so.

--
Graham J

On 5/2/2023 3:34 PM, mike wrote:
> I want to keep all my mail on the Google servers if I can, in case I ever
> need it in the future, so if I use "local storage", isn't that equivalent,
> in terms of the chance of losing your data when the disk crashes, the same
> essentially as POP?
First I don't use gmail but assume it is similar to Yahoo Mail.

I use Thunderbird for all of my email and newsgroups. I also use the
scheduler Lightning.

With Yahoo, all of the things you do form Thunderbird both send and
receive emails are retained on the Yahoo server (I periodically delete
every thing from the server.)

With Lightning I can add events and task. If I wish to invite people to
and event I just list the person in the Invite List for the event. This
include invitations to people using the MS schedulers. Outlook etc.

I use both the portable version of Thunderbird and the computer version.
I have the portable version on a thumbdrive so can use my email from any
computer I have access to.

HOW many emails do you keep? I periodically delete any email that has
no long term implications.

On 2023-05-02 23:00, Graham J wrote:
> mike wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>
>> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
>> I don't want that.
>>
>> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>>
>> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
>
> A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
> all the email from your server.
>
> Depending on your settings.  With POP it will then remove messages from
> the server unless you tell it otherwise.  With IMAP it will leave all
> the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
> delete some or all of them.
>
> The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
> when there is no internet connection.  In the past this would have been
> vital - perhaps now rather less so.

Saves bandwidth (no need to download again those cached messages) and
speeds up some operations (like search for a string, which can be done
locally if the server doesn't support searches).

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2023-05-02 23:07, knuttle wrote:
> HOW many emails do you keep?   I periodically delete any email that has
> no long term implications.

ALL. 15 gigs of it. He said so. In a single folder, apparently (INBOX).

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 5/2/23 13:36, this is what mike wrote:
> I think I'm closer to understanding why Thunderbird hangs in the
> composition window because Betterbird just did the same thing now!
> https://i.postimg.cc/cCFV7ZHy/tbhanging.jpg
>
> It's too long of a story, months in the making, where a quick summary is
> that I gave up forever on Thunderbird because it was unusable in
> composition windows and moved to Betterbird which worked fine for weeks.
>
> Even though my Gmail storage has been at the 15GB limit for months now.
> https://i.postimg.cc/1tcZWMnR/compact.jpg
>
> Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
> https://i.postimg.cc/85bqd59j/bbhung.jpg
>
> It seems Mozilla developers haven't fully tested their compaction process.
> At least it seems they never tested it with an almost full Gmail account.
>
> I don't remember if compacting caused the TB hang but it caused it for BB.
>
> Given that both Thunderbird & Betterbird compaction causes the composition
> window to hang every time thereafter, I need to fix this problem pronto.
>
> Is there an easy way to un-compact a Thunderbird/Betterbird installation?

For Gods sake, can you people (mike for one) stop posting to 3+ groups when 1 suffices!!!
If it's so important, why didn't you (mike) post to the Linux or Mint groups, you posted to both windows 10 & 11?
Don't answer, that's rhetorical.
--
Al

On 5/2/2023 3:46 PM, mike wrote:

> Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
> even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.

If only there were a scientist in the room.

How about you *look* at the files, and see what they contain ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HxD

https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

When a file is too large for notepad, that's what I use.

Inbox is a text file
Inbox.msf is a text file

In Linux (or bash shell for Windows)

less Inbox

less Inbox.msf

and you can page up and down.

There are also specialized editors in Windows,
that can handle files that big (without bloating
on RAM).

Notepad is only good for about 900MB, because
it's a 32-bit thing with 1.8GB max memory.
Characters are stored in 16-bit storage locations,
cutting max characters to 900 million characters
worth of ASCII.

At a minimum, a mail tool needs headers, so it can
present a menu of choices for reading mail. This means
a populated Inbox.msf would help a lot. If you pull
headers, the protocol may be too stupid for productive
interaction with a box that large. That could be
eight million messages.

Right now, my Profile is in a custom location. Not the
usual location. If I wanted, I could put my email
on an encrypted partition, if that mattered. Then
I would not care about message bodies.

Paul

On 5/2/23 1:39 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:
>> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>>
>> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
>
> I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
>
> I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
> locally, in more than one computer.

I periodically delete everything at the gmail servers. My current
thunderbird profile is 31 GB and contains everything I considered worth
saving going back to 1994. Plus a lot of stuff that I just forgot to
delete, of course. I have this backed up to 4 partitions on an internal
drive and 2 USB drives on a rotating basis. If the house catches fire
I'll grab the USB drives (within arm's length) and then hunt for the
fire extinguisher.

I think I'm covered. HD space is cheap.

--
Cheers, Bev
Polish loan sharks: they loan you money and then skip town.

On 5/2/23 2:00 PM, Graham J wrote:
> mike wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>
>> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
>> I don't want that.
>>
>> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>>
>> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
>
> A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
> all the email from your server.
>
> Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from
> the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all
> the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
> delete some or all of them.

I have one account set to both POP (leave it on the server until I go in
and throw it away by hand) and IMAP at the gmail sever. I can treat it
as IMAP on the rare occasion that I want to get email with my phone or
tablet but download it to my computer. I just added a notebook computer
to the mix, but I haven't used it for email yet -- but it's windows and
will certainly be IMAP.

> The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
> when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been
> vital - perhaps now rather less so.

I simply don't trust Them to keep my stuff forever. I certainly don't
trust it to be private. How do I know what happens to it when I think
I've deleted it? I was surprised to find that 'trash' was still alive
in 'all mail'. Not even certain why *I* want to keep it forever, but I
like having the option.

--
Cheers, Bev
Polish loan sharks: they loan you money and then skip town.

On 5/2/23 2:07 PM, knuttle wrote:

> I use both the portable version of Thunderbird and the computer version.
> I have the portable version on a thumbdrive so can use my email from any
> computer I have access to.
>
> HOW many emails do you keep? I periodically delete any email that has
> no long term implications.

When I was a contractor at JPL I decided to clean out all the ancient
files that were at least 10 years old. I talked to the admins of the
sections we supported who said Fine, sure, go ahead. I sent several
bales of stuff to the shredder and relinquished a whole office. The
next week somebody from the JPL contracts office called to see if I
still had a copy of some document that they'd trashed long ago.

You know the punch line here. Shit like this has long-lasting effects.

--
Cheers, Bev
Nothing is so stupid that you can't find somebody who
did it at least once if you look hard enough.

On 5/2/2023 4:47 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2023-05-02 21:25, Paul wrote:
>> On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
>>
>>> Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
>>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
>>
>> Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
>>
>> If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
>> why would you even *think* of doing that ?
>>
>> First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
>> 64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
>>
>> The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
>> but this may have been based on some assumptions about
>> the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
>> absolute limits of what RAM they could access.
>
> Or FAT filesystem per file limit.

But we also speculate the limit is wrong, because the OP
is an example of such.

Paul

On 02/05/2023 22:32, Big Al wrote:
>
> For Gods sake, can you people (mike for one) stop posting to 3+ groups
> when 1 suffices!!!

Why did you not trim your list before telling anybody what to do. DO
YOURSELF FIRST BEFORE TELLING ANYBODY WHAT TO DO.

FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF
FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF

On 5/2/2023 3:46 PM, mike wrote:
> On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
>> that fit your interest.  ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.   Or school,
>> work, country club, etc.  Add additional subfolders in the primary
>> folder, to further organize your letters.
>
> The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the folders
> on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail server?
>
> My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
> folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.
>
> Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
> even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
>
> When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the local
> machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google servers.
>
> Doesn't it?
>
> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
> I don't want that.
>
> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>
> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
For easy access you should use folders on any storage device you use if
you have more that 20 files. (20 file, the number of lines on a screen)
This applies if you are using the gmail server, an external drive, or
what ever.
The other option is to scroll through thousand of emails/files to find
the one you want. This takes time. My brother never uses a
subfolder. I don't know how many time I have had to resend an email
because he can not find the original.
I can find any file on my 1TB harddrive with about 4 clicks to move
through the subfolders until the file I want is on the screen. There
are over 80,000 files in over 150GB of data, or it takes about 1 minute
in most cases. This does not include the emails that are in 4 accounts
in Thunderbird.
How long does it take you to find a file?

On 5/2/2023 4:39 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:
>> On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of
>>> folders that fit your interest.  ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.   Or
>>> school, work, country club, etc.  Add additional subfolders in the
>>> primary folder, to further organize your letters.
>>
>> The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the
>> folders
>> on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail
>> server?
>>
>> My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
>> folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.
>>
>> Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
>> even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
>>
>> When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the
>> local
>> machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google
>> servers.
>>
>> Doesn't it?
>>
>> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
>> I don't want that.
>
> Yes, it does.
>
> And it tries to sync the local disk storage with the remote server,
> which takes looooooooooooooooong.
>
> And if you have everything in the inbox, it gets worse.
>
>
>> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
>>
>> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
>
> I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
>
> I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
> locally, in more than one computer.
>
What will happen to your email if you are forced to leave the gmail
system? What if a hacker access you account and destroys it?
The church had storage with an online provider when the account was
closed before the data was transferred, they lost everything. (Yes I
know it good practices would have prevented the problem) Some years ago
thousands of people lost their on line genealogy data, when the site was
discontinued.
Just because it is online does not mean it does is safe from destruction.

On 2023-05-03 00:46, knuttle wrote:
> On 5/2/2023 4:39 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:
>>> On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of
>>>> folders that fit your interest.  ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.   Or
>>>> school, work, country club, etc.  Add additional subfolders in the
>>>> primary folder, to further organize your letters.
>>>
>>> The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the
>>> folders
>>> on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail
>>> server?
>>>
>>> My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
>>> folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.
>>>
>>> Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
>>> even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
>>>
>>> When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the
>>> local
>>> machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google
>>> servers.
>>>
>>> Doesn't it?
>>>
>>> Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
>>> I don't want that.
>>
>> Yes, it does.
>>
>> And it tries to sync the local disk storage with the remote server,
>> which takes looooooooooooooooong.
>>
>> And if you have everything in the inbox, it gets worse.
>>
>>
>>> I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
>>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the
>>> past.
>>>
>>> I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
>>
>> I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
>>
>> I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
>> locally, in more than one computer.
>>
> What will happen to your email if you are forced to leave the gmail
> system?   What if a hacker access you account and destroys it?

I have my copies.

> The church had storage with an online provider when the account was
> closed before the data was transferred, they lost everything. (Yes I
> know it good practices would have prevented the problem) Some years ago
> thousands of people lost their on line genealogy data, when the site was
> discontinued.
>
> Just because it is online does not mean it does is safe from destruction.

Of course.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2023-05-03 00:04, Paul wrote:
> On 5/2/2023 4:47 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 2023-05-02 21:25, Paul wrote:
>>> On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
>>>
>>>> Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird
>>>> became
>>>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
>>>> prior.
>>>
>>> Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
>>>
>>> If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
>>> why would you even *think* of doing that ?
>>>
>>> First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
>>> 64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
>>>
>>> The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
>>> but this may have been based on some assumptions about
>>> the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
>>> absolute limits of what RAM they could access.
>>
>> Or FAT filesystem per file limit.
>
> But we also speculate the limit is wrong, because the OP
> is an example of such.

Oh, that was the limit on Exchange, I'm sure of that. And when you hit
the limit, you lost the folder. The admins sent warnings to tell the
staff to empty the inbox _before_ it reached 2 gigs. I think it was 2 gigs.

That limit doesn't affect nowdays for several reasons. People do not use
fat. Servers do not use fat. There are imap server that use "multiple"
files per folder (can be one file per mail).

And Thunderbird, when used in a FAT disk, had that limit as well.

--
Cheers, Carlos.