UPDATE: Not a "duplicate"! It describes a problem no one else has posted explicitly about. In this post there is a realization that this is SNAP's fault, and then the realization that one wants a DEB version of Thunderbird, and not a SNAP. People who are like me, they may not know this behaviour is by-design, part of SNAP and do not know to google to find the DEB not SNAP links posted below. Knowing what caused the problem and why you are doing something is important.
It should be closed, but not marked as a duplicate.
OK, just a user here, been doing it for decades, never said I was good at it. I am just trying to rebuild my computer from a hardware failure. The hardware failure was my / drive.
There is much I cannot access because I cannot access my Thunderbird email archives I keep on a networked computer with backups configured. My / SSD root drive is too small to hold all my email archives in ~/snap/thunderbird/..../{profile}.default/Mail/Local Folders. If my email archives have been on my / SSD root drive, they would now be gone. Networked drives and remote backups is how I have done this for decades.
I stupidly tried methods I have used in the past to use a symlink to point to my email archives. Thunderbird repeatedly:
- said it cannot access profile, or
- it froze when I tried to import from the network drive, then a large local drive on my desktop, or
- Thunderbird simply refuses to open any window, just crashes. In this case, I try Thunderbird at the command line. It says it cannot access {....} something that has no symlinks in it... like it is trying a hard-coded literal access instead of a normal file system access where symlinks would be decoded.
I broke the directory tree with a symlink at Local Folders, at {profile}.default, other places, etc. None of this worked.
I finally read that snap controls access to directories, and clearly my source to import mail, or my destination where I wanted thunderbird to store my email, or the profile itself (problem differed in different attempts in the last 2 days) was not in the legal access areas for snap. It seems I being forced to keep my email on my / SSD root drive, and I have to buy a far bigger $$$ drive for that.
When I google how to configure snap to access other drives, on askubuntu and other sources, I see only how to make it access removable media in /mnt... for instance the 5 year old solution was (from How do I access mounted hard drive with a Snap application?):
sudo snap connect inkscape:removable-media
so I infer the 5-year old solution for me would map to:
sudo snap connect thunderbird:coke-can-sized-thumbdrive
That is not the solution in my case as these are large drives used to put a lot of data, other data, not just email, that does not fit on the root drive, or removable media, and I would not want on removable media anyway.
So can someone tell me:
a) How do I tell snap that it can access /bigdrive/... and its subdirectories by symlinks if:
- where /bigdrive is a NFS mount from another computer ?
- where /bigdrive is a regular mount of a large SATA data drive on the desktop ?
This is not a new thing to be asked about snap ... (3 years ago, Reddit)
Honesty Snap developers should thought about that since many people have a small SSD with a large hard drive.
I was told long ago snap is bad and I should never use it. I figured, I don't need it in my life, so I have not, and never learned it. Now I am struggling to get at some of my most important data because of it.
Other Options:
b) If I directly download a tar.gz of Thunderbird, it will act normally, but I will not get updates.... is this a better idea ? I need a competent email program that works like regular programs to access data.
c) Or is it a better idea to just downgrade to 22.04 where Thunderbird is not a damn snap?
This is the first time I have been snapped, and I am not a fan. After 2 days without my archives, I will say, snap is a pain in the ass. If snap cannot now (2025) access large data drives easily, where large data sets like email archives might be kept, then snap is completely inappropriate for any core app and snap-thunderbird should not be part of Ubuntu, ever. (snap for doggy foreign games, no problemo, I would use it knowing it cannot get at my data in other places.) Can there at least be a deb option for Thunderbird please ?
And I have not even gotten to asking snap-Mozilla to do anything challenging yet... arg. I can see the security aspects of snap with Mozilla a little more... but it changes everything really useful into a two-step process... If I am going to execute what I download anyway why make the rest of my life hard. There is no cure for stupid.
