Trying to understand print profiles

[jens3 12]

First, let me say that I am running the 'master' branch of cura (4.20.8) so my question is necessarily a bit vague. I have run into an issue where deleting a print profile causes a 'configuration error' next time Cura is started. Additional error information points to corrupt profiles (the ones I deleted). I get an option to wipe everything - printers, profiles, the works. That is just plain stupid and is not an acceptable option. Digging around, I find that this is a common problem but I have not found an explanation of why this happens nor how to fix it. There have been vague references to deleting the mentioned (in the error message) profiles in the configuration but no mention of exactly where I find the profiles. Yes, I can go to 'help' and open up the configuration files but where do I go from there. There is no 'profiles' subdirectory. Further, at least under Linux/Ubuntu there are actually two places where configuration files are located and they seem to contain the same stuff. The info is at Home/.config/cura as well as Home/.local/share/Cura. In previous instances of messing with the configuration, I had to be careful I always did the same changes to both locations. So here are my questions:

 

What is the point of having the configuration in two places? Do I really need to change both instances or is one a backup of the other and is automatically updated? If so, which one is the authoritative version?

 

Which of the subdirectories contains the actual profiles? There are a lot of very similar files in the various subdirectories and none of them are labeled the same way the actual profiles were labeled.

 

How can I link the file names in the configuration area(s) to the actual names of the files I deleted via Cura?

 

Bonus question: I have three printers configured. They are all accessed via network however when I do configure a new printer, none of these printers shows up on a listing. If I tell Cura the actual IP number of the new printer I always get back an error saying the printer is not communicating (or similar). The very first printer somehow reports as a 'connected printer' and the other two show as 'preset printers'. Cura talks fine with all three - the first one via octoprint, the other two via the network. HOWEVER .... while the connected printer has it's own profiles, every profile I generate for one of the other printers shows up in the profiles of all the other 'preset' printers. I can even set up a brand new printer, make a custom profile for it and that same profile shows up in the profile list for all the other 'preset' printers. What is going on? What is the difference between a connected and a preset printer? Why would a profile that was set up for one particular printer show up in a completely different printer profile listing? It makes no sense to me!

If it makes a difference, the two 'preset' printers are both set up as 'custom' printers.

 

I would very much appreciate either an explanation or a link to some article explaining things. While the corruption issue is the most pressing (even though Cura works fine if I ignore the error message), I would really like to understand things rather than trying to operate something that makes no sense to me.

Edited November 24, 2022 by jens3
update

[nallath 1,125]

There are two places where profiles can be stored. One location is where the "bundled" plugins are stored. In the case of windows, that is within the program folder.

It's also possible to have custom profiles (downloaded, custom created by the user). These live in the userspace. In the case of windows, that is the %appdata% folder.

In linux, the user profiles are located in ~/.local/share/cura/5.3/

There is also a ~/.config/cura/5.3 which should only contain config files (as the name implies). The reason that we split this up is because we want to adhere to the "rules" / conventions set by Linux.

[jens3 12]

Thanks for your reply. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix the configuration error / profile error without wiping the entire installation ?