Hmm... That is worrying, given that you posted your first message in this discussion topic 8 days ago (on 29th September 2024), BUT we see now, in those "find" commands outputs, that the history.sqlite file in the original ".deb based" Thunderbird user profile was changed AFTER that, and it was changed as recently as 3 days ago (on 3rd October 2024). If you did the Ubuntu MATE version upgrade 8 days ago (or even earlier) AND if that upgrade process (had) successfully migrated your Thunderbird from the "deb based" version to a "snap" based version, then it seems to me that you should NOT be getting any changes in the /home/user/.thunderbird directory tree after that, BUT you are!
When did you actually do the Ubuntu MATE upgrade to Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat")? From what Ubuntu MATE version did you upgrade? What method did you use to do the upgrade?
Logged in as your regular user (and NOT as "root"), could you please run the following commands and reply with their output:
Also since Thunderbird takes so much of your space I just recently found and read something that might be of interest and use to you about how to compress deleted messages: Compacting folders - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
When ? I don't know. Certainly just days from the 24.04 release. Since I am always under 'For any new version' and accept all updates/upgrades as they come.
To your suggested command I get:
apt list --installed | grep -i 'thunderbird'
thunderbird-locale-en-gb/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-en-us/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-en/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-es-ar/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-es-es/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-es/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird-locale-fr/noble,noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 all [installed]
thunderbird/noble,now 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 amd64 [installed]
snap list thunderbird
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
thunderbird 128.3.0esr-3 526 latest/stable canonical✓ -
And you know what ? If I go to gmail.com and connect to one of my 2 gmail accounts it says used storage space is 7.53 Gb…..
Maybe I should simply purge anything which is Thunderbird (and maybe firefox too) from my laptop and re-install (Gmail accounts would sync/update themselves)... an 'Harakiri' solution of sort...
I've found the following topic that you posted on 28th April 2024, that leads me to believe that you upgraded from Ubuntu MATE 23.10 ("Mantic Minotaur") to Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat") by using update-manager -d :
In that message, you wrote the following paragraph regarding Mozilla Thunderbird:
"(...) TBird is now a snap - no option to it otherwise. I need to set-up again all my email and calendar connections anew. A shame. CORRECTION: about 24 mins later TB 'wokeup' in good shape with all the emails and calendar re-established - so my only guess here is that it needed to rebuild the index under the new snap. I had to make a new launcher on the desktop in any case (icon disappeared) (...)"
This makes it even more confusing to me why you are still getting recent changes (as recent as 3 days ago, on 3rd October 2024) in your /home/user/.thunderbird directory tree
OK. I've found the following web page on Launchpad that says that each of those "2:1snap1-0ubuntu3" thunderbird apt / deb packages is a "(...) transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed.":
OK, good That output shows that the "snap" version of Thunderbird got installed.
Unfortunately, I've now also found the following "Open" bug that was reported 3 months ago (and updated 18 days ago) in Mozilla's Bugzilla for "Product: Thunderbird":
Quite frankly, under these circumstances, I'm afraid that I am at a loss about what is the best course of action I still strongly advise that, whatever you do, please start by BACKING UP both "/home/user/.thunderbird" -AND- "/home/user/snap/thunderbird" directory trees to some "ext4" filesystem in some external media. Then, read carefully @ericmarceau's earlier and excellent reply in this topic, that he posted 14 hours ago - "Memory and disk usage UM 24.04 - #33 by ericmarceau" - and also @Alarik's suggestions. Also, maybe someone else here in the "Ubuntu MATE Community" can give you some additional advice? Good luck!
Ric
Your extensive replies are very very appreciated. And those of Eric and Alarik also.
As I said earlier, I now conclude that best is to simply purge everything which is Thunderbird (and maybe firefox too) from my laptop and re-install (Gmail accounts would sync/update themselves)... While threading carefully at doing it. So from a clean slate.
re: profile not migrating
Since by going on gmail web access one account shows 7.53 GB... and not 188GB... there is obvious bloating for a reason unknown to me. Which may be the source of the issue. So again a reason to consider a purge/re-install case - unless I am advised otherwise.
That may very well be because web mail version of gmail doesn't store the messages that are saved on thunderbird that you might have deleted but were in actuallity not deleted since for some reason to truly delete mail from thunderbird one must do extra steps - for details see this link:
I have 20 years of emails in my Thunderbird directory, and I only have 6.2 GB, so you can understand why we have a hard time imagining sizes of the order of what you have!
In addition to what @Alarik said, you may be retaining emails that contain large attachments.
There is the option to keep only the the email body itself, as a record of what and when, without keeping the attachments. That can be done per the following:
The reason I need those is that the ISP POP servers are NOT behaving the way POP should properly behave. Without that, they will stay in the Inbox !!! They are all behaving as IMAP servers now, a.k.a. mirroring servers.
What you should watch out for as well is that they do NOT delete the emails completely, again as POP previously did, but only moving those to the "Bin".
I suspect it is because they want to make a backup image of an email you received before it get deleted from their systems (Homeland Security anyone???). I try, but frequently fail, to log into my server directly to purge those immediately after downloading to my desktop.
Lastly, you don't need to maintain a mirror image! You can "offload" to your own local storage folder. My desktop account structure is as follows, where I have filters to move various emails to selective folders under "Local Folders", which is local-only.
They are all behaving as IMAP servers now, a.k.a. mirroring servers.
