Sharing Firefox and Thunderbird profile between Windows and Linux

[srwilson]

I am starting to get into Linux and I would really like to actually share my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles between both Windows and Linux in my dual boot system. It's such a pain to maintain two installs of each especially with the 15000 extensions I have.

So far I have been able to store the profiles on a Fat32 partition and get it to work in Windows. But when I tried to edit the profiles.ini file in Linux (as I did in Windows) to make the profile point to the shared one, it gave me an error when I tried to start the programs. Something about the program already running but being nonresponsive. I also saw you can make the profile point to a different location using symbolic links, but it seems that Nautilus won't let me make one into the FAT32 partition. Any ideas here?

Also, I have done some googling and found that another major obstacle is that the paths in the prefs.js file are absolute and will have to be different for each OS.

Has anybody had any success with this? Is it even remotely possible? Or should I just give up now.

[patrickfromspain]

I think it's not possible... I'm nearly sure that the way thunderbird and firefox manage profiles is quit different in windows and linux.

Anyway... 15000 extensions? You really use 15000 extensions? Hard to believe

[Crowhurst]

I believe it is possible, i have found some sites which discuss it:

http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fir...nderbird.shtml

I have followed their instructions for sharing tb, and have done the same as you - have a fat32 partition for my mails. Windows works fine, Ubuntu TB now sees all the directories, but does not see the mail inside.

Still looking for answers. Will also want to follow the rest of the clemson instructions when i get time to share bookmarks, etc.

It would be great if this were simpler, i think it would help many people maintain dual boot.

Hopefully it will get on the development path for TB someday.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Ive seen things to share bookmarks but Im still working it out. Im trying to share mine over a network so 3 PCs share the same bookmarks. I think Im having write access issues.

[DeadEyes]

It is possible, I share thunderbird between windows and linux.
Try either of these:

1.
Go to .mozilla-thunderbird/
delete the <randomnumber>.default then create a symbolic link to your windows created .default in my case its n8vm9c0p.default finally edit the .mozilla-thunderbird/profile.ini (the linux one)
Path=n8vm9c0p.default

2.
Launch thunderbird with the -profilemanager switch
mozilla-thunderbird -profilemanager
Create a profile and when you choose the folder select the existing windows one

I haven't tried firefox but I would imagine its pretty much the same. The only problem is that some extensions don't play nice on different OSs

When I was setting this up I found a great tutorial, If I can find it again I'll post the link here.

Edit:
http://www.plaintivemewling.com/?p=20

[sbooth]

I've got it working... and will rack my brains to remember how! I have XP on a laptop in the house, Ubuntu on a desktop in the shed, my Thunderbird profile stored on a samba-shared network drive and accessed by both... heaven knows how I did it but it seems to work. I've just installed Ubuntu on my laptop (last night) and it's running like a dream... so now I'm faced with sorting Thunderbird on my laptop Ubuntu install... and I'm going to tackle sharing the Firefox profile too. Ho hum - I suspect I'll have many happy hours of 'losing' everything and finding it again.

I wish I could remember how I did it - because keeping profiles on a server (assuming one *has* a server at home!) seems to be a fabulous way of doing things... I just have to sort out the installations on each PC I use to access the same place.

I'm trying to work out how I did it (so my husband can sort his setup out too) - if I do, I'll post it here!

[lolcese]

I need to do it in a different way, I have all my Thunderbird emails in the linux partition, and I want to use them in Windows.
Any ideas?
Thank you

[marciovinicius]

Originally Posted by lolcese I need to do it in a different way, I have all my Thunderbird emails in the Linux partition, and I want to use them in Windows. Any ideas? Thank you

I think you gonna need some like this http://easylinux.info/uploads/explore2fs-1.07.zip or this http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html

Besides you can move your entire profile to a FAT32 Partition...

I think the better and easiest way to share profiles between Windows and Linux is the way that DeadEyes explained (except that the first step can be done via Profile Manager) but...

It doesn't work in my office... My profiles (Firefox and Thunderbird) are in a server (Linux CentOS) and I don't know how to point profile paths in a network... How can I do it? the network simply doesn't appear within Profile Manager...

[bazz]

Not sure if this may help ya. I'v been doing this for a while with mail. I also do it over a network from my network server. Just need to mount the network share and have the correct right.
For example I have a share on my server with my wife’s email and my email in a folder called email. In that folder is a folder with her profile, and a folder with my profile. The email folder is shared with read rights, and the two profile folders we have full rights (that way we can download and delete email in thunderbird.)
So at boot I have my linux machines mount the mail share from the server to /mnt/email of my local machine. I just map the share in windows to do the same. So at this point it doesn’t matter if I’m using window or Linux, I can just run thunderbird and get my mail and everything will be as if I always use one machine. The other cool thing is I have 8 computers at my house each one set up to do this, so I can get all my mail from any computer.


http://forum.linspire.com/viewtopic....hlight=#368053

As for the "program already running but being nonresponsive" I have the same thing happen sometimes. The fix I have to do is manually go to the profile folder open it to make it active, the restart thunderbird.

As for bookmarks you can use the foxmarks extension for firefox.

[mondi0924]

I have a setup right now where I use one profile for thunderbird , both in windows and linux.

Heres what I did,

1. setup ext2fs in windows , this way you can view the ext3 partition which is your linux partition. - I forgot the exact link to the app . but you can always google for it.

2. create a new profile in winxp thunderbird that points to my linux thunderbird profile.

* If you have an existing setup you can just copy the contents of the old profile into the new one .

* This may or may not work with firefox but I have yet to try it. don't have time right now to dabble with my comp.

* windows only extensions will not work naturally.

* There might be some issues with some messages not correctly showing up if whether they were already read or not.

Hope it helps