Thunderbird uninstalled during Discover update

Help
1

Earlier today when updating via Discover I was met with a prompt that the version of Thunderbird I had installed was no longer receiving updates, and would be replaced with another version. My assumption was that by proceeding, all my configuration and settings would remain intact, so I clicked to confirm. A moment later, Discover crashed. I checked Application launcher and Thunderbird is gone, so reopened Discover hoping that I would find the update still available, but it was not.

I haven’t filed a bug report yet.

I installed the latest version of Thunderbird using ‘flatpak install org.mozilla.thunderbird’ but none of my content/configuration was there. Is it recoverable or am I S.O.L.?

I tried to pull the journal for it, but tbh I don’t know exactly what I’m looking at so if anyone can help that would be nice.

Many thanks to anyone who can chime in and help!

May 27 10:45:56 laptop13 plasma-discover[64590]: /var/tmp/flatpak-cache-2VSBQ3/org.mozilla.thunderbird_esr.Locale-O3KAQ3/repo-oS6Kf4: Pulled runtime/org.mozilla.thunderbird_esr.Locale/x86_64/stable from flathub
May 27 10:45:56 laptop13 plasma-discover[64590]: ASSERT: "m_jobTransactionsByRef.contains(ref)" in file /workspace/build/libdiscover/backends/FlatpakBackend/FlatpakTransactionThread.cpp, line 541
May 27 10:45:56 laptop13 plasma-discover[64590]: KCrash: Application 'plasma-discover' crashing... crashRecursionCounter = 2
May 27 10:45:57 laptop13 systemd-coredump[66574]: Process 64590 (plasma-discover) of user 1000 dumped core.
                                                  #6  0x00005e0e05bf5e35 n/a (plasma-discover + 0x26e35)
                                                  #9  0x00005e0e05bef8a5 n/a (plasma-discover + 0x208a5)
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-processor[66575]: "/usr/bin/plasma-discover" 64590 "/var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.plasma-discover.1000.aa5803bcc12a41c3894c6b8371904f80.64590.1779903956000000.zst"
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66622]: KCrash metadata not marked complete. Please file a bug at bugs.kde.org giving as much detail about the crash as possible and maybe include the file "/home/bantern/.cache/kcrash-metadata/plasma-discover.aa5803bcc12a41c3894c6b8371904f80.64590.ini"
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi[66639]: Mapping found despite product information being provided by the application. Consider removing the mapping entry "plasma-discover"
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi[66639]: excavating QList("dump", "COREDUMP_FILENAME=/var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.plasma-discover.1000.aa5803bcc12a41c3894c6b8371904f80.64590.1779903956000000.zst")
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:            PID: 64590 (plasma-discover)
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:   Command Line: /usr/bin/plasma-discover
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:     Executable: /usr/bin/plasma-discover
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:        Storage: /var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.plasma-discover.1000.aa5803bcc12a41c3894c6b8371904f80.64590.1779903956000000.zst (present)
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:        Message: Process 64590 (plasma-discover) of user 1000 dumped core.
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:                 #6  0x00005e0e05bf5e35 n/a (plasma-discover + 0x26e35)
May 27 10:45:58 laptop13 drkonqi-coredump-launcher[66681]:                 #9  0x00005e0e05bef8a5 n/a (plasma-discover + 0x208a5)
May 27 10:46:00 laptop13 systemd[2275]: Started app-\x2fusr\x2fbin\x2fplasma\x2ddiscover@b45b7b292125445ab895dcb264938c86.service - /usr/bin/plasma-discover.
2

/.thunderbird/XXXX.default.default is the config file. You can overwrite the Flatpak config file with it if it’s the same version.

3

OK, the previous application ID was org.mozilla.Thunderbird (note the uppercase T), so try this to shift your config to the new application ID.

cd ~/.var/app && mv org.mozilla.Thunderbird org.mozilla.thunderbird
cd ~/.local/share/flatpak/overrides && mv org.mozilla.Thunderbird org.mozilla.thunderbird

The second one may give you a “file not found” error if you don’t have any permission overrides for Thunderbird. If so, don’t worry about it.

Then flatpak run org.mozilla.thunderbird and hopefully you’ll be back in business.

4

Marking as solution because it led me to the solution, but it didn’t work as intended at first -

The first command just moved the old Thunderbird Flatpak directory into the new one, so I backed up the entire thing and then copy/pasted the contents of org.mozilla.Thunderbird into org.mozilla.thunderbird, made sure to select “Write into/Apply to all” and then “Overwrite/Apply to all” and then ran flatpak run org.mozilla.thunderbird and HUZZAH, it’s all there.

Appreciate the help from y’all, glad I posted!

5

Ah, sorry, my bad, I didn’t consider the case that the new directory already existed - which I guess it would have if you’d already tried to start the new app.

You’re welcome, glad it’s all working now!

6

Same happened to me. At first I got notification in Thunderbird about the changes and after that in Discover. System asked for restart and after restart I noticed that my thunderbird is gone. Reinstalled and thankfully my configuration are there.