Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some informations which might be helpful for you, not really frequently asked but hopefully useful. Feel free to add your own question as a ticket.
Why was Virtual Identity removed from addons.mozilla.org?
Read my blog entry or check the related thunderbird mailinglist topic
How to Install Virtual Identity Extension
- Click or Right Click to download and save the Extension-File somewhere
- In Thunderbird select the "Tools", "Add-ons" menu item
- Select "Extensions" form the left hand menu
- Click the "gear" in the upper right
- Select "install add-on from file"
- Browse to the saved file
- click "Open"
- Ignore the unknown author warning and click "Install now"
What is this Base Identity?
The Base Identity is the Identity which is used to build the virtual Identity upon. In a simple situation you open the MessageCompose-Dialog and start to write an email. One if a permanently stored Identity is shown in the Identity-Selection. If you now change the Name of the sender, the extension will create a virtual Identity based on the former shown (and so called Base) Identity. Settings like SMTP or return receipts might be used from the base Identity.
If you store the information, which base Identity was used, a later usage of the same virtual Identity will be first choosing the base identity and then changing the relevant thing (like Name). If you don't store the base identity it will just change the settings of the currently selected Identity.
How to move Virtual Identity Configuration from one computer to another (Import/Export? or sync)?
Please use the options which will be part of the to-be released 0.6.9/0.7 to export or import any configuration files. Export does nothing except copying the virtualIdentity.rdf file to another place. Therefore you can use any virtualIdentitiy.rdf from any old profiles-directory and simply import it.
If you like to do the changes by hand, check the following description:
In the Storage RDF reference you can find some related information. Just copy the virtualIdentity.rdf from one profile to another and it should work.
The only remaining problem is that stored virtual Identities probably contain information about the base identity (on which to build upon a new identity) and an SMTP server. Both informations are coded the same way Thunderbird used to do it, so they are named by keys, like id2 or smtp2. If those keys don't match on different computers the relation will be wrong. You can check and adapt those id's in the prefs.js file, but take care. You might break your mail account settings if you make it wrong there.
Beggars should be no choosers.
-- John Heywood
debugging a problem / sending debug-output
If some problems with the extension occur, it is often useful to get some debug information.
Error Console
If you activate the Javascript Error Console (see Tools Menu), you can see if some problems with the implementation occur. Please post the output if you think it's relevant (best enclosed in brackets, {{{ and }}})
Error: Component returned failure code: 0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE) [nsIXMLHttpRequest.statusText] Source file: file:///usr/lib64/thunderbird/components/nsBlocklistService.js Line: 469
Debug Log
The debug-log is a feature of Virtual Identity and can be activated in Virtual Identities Preferences, last Tab. The Debug-Output contains some information about the Software and all the extensions you are running and describes the steps in which the Extension tries to do it's job. Just copy and paste this output into your bug-report - but replace any confidential information before making it public with a useful pattern.
If you enclose the output in brackets {{{ and }}}, the output will be formatted nicely as shown below:
Thunderbird 3.1.4 (20101004131948; Linux x86_64)
- DOM Inspector inspector@mozilla.org 2.0.8
- Enigmail {847b3a00-7ab1-11d4-8f02-006008948af5} 1.1.2
- Virtual Identity {dddd428e-5ac8-4a81-9f78-276c734f75b8} 0.6.8-15-g8088007++
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
## vI_getHeader: found header: envelope-to[:1] - stored as 'XXXX@absorb.it'
## vI_getHeader: found header: received ...stored to recognize received mail
## vI_getHeader: found header: to[:1] - stored as 'YYYY <XXXX@absorb.it>'
