I'm running a small windows network (AD) where we use Thunderbird to retrieve mails via IMAP. However, some users have also created local folders in order to archive messages.
The goal is that users can access their emails and, ideally, also their local folders no matter from which PC they log onto the domain.
My initial idea was to do the following: Put each user's full profile into their home folder (p:). Since this allows me to give each mail profile the same name without the risk of collisions, I could roll out one generic profiles.ini that points to said profile folder.
I am not exactly sure which data exactly and in what way Thunderbird needs to retrieve the profile information so I don't know what kind of impact this has on the net, and on the Thunderbird performance. Mind you, some of the profiles are several Gigabytes large. Also, I assume, but would appreciate if someone confirmed it, that it could lead to issues if a user logged on to Thunderbird through a second computer without having closed it on the first.
Thus, my questions:
- Can Thunderbird be run straight from a profile on a file share, even with very large profiles (without a considerable impact on application performance)?
- How problematic would it be if the same profile was accessed from two stations? If this should be a big issues, any ideas how to make sure this can't happen?
- What reasons are there to favor windows roaming profiles for Thunderbird profiles over the file share solution, if any?
Best Answer
The problem(s)
I have searched several times for answers to a very similar problem like you have - many large attachments eat away disk space and put strain on the network each time Thunderbird is used. I think this bug from 2009 is central to our problems:
Bug 517425 - Thunderbird does store local IMAP mail copy in AppData\Roaming not AppData\Local of profile
The idea behind it is: if IMAP mail was stored in the local folder, a user would log on onto another new PC and just get his mails from the server (only text, pretty cheap). Then, by configuration setting, he would download some or all attachments in the background while working, without delay on login or logoff.
If the mail is in the roaming profile, on the other hand, it always bites you, one way or another:
Possible answers
Regarding your questions I cannot offer complete answers, only things I've found out in search for solutions:
-p
. Note that in this case the profile should only be used by one client at the same time, not multiple clients. Also your connection needs to be stable and I personally would also be cautious regarding data integrity (CIFS/SMB is asynchronous).Alternatives?
Approaching the problems from another side, I have thought about possible workarounds/alternatives: