Phil M Perry wrote:
> My PC is dual-booted between Windows XP :-( and Linux (Ubuntu 7.10).
> I have Internet access on both sides. What I want to do is have a "common"
> image of both Firefox and of Thunderbird. That is, settings, bookmark lists,
> plug-ins, password lists, email archives, etc., etc. would live on a FAT32
> disk partition visible to both sides. Whichever side I boot up on, the same
> bookmarks, plug-ins, etc. and my complete email archive would be there.
> Can this be done? Obviously, the binary programs are separate, but I'm
> hoping that the configuration and data can be shared. So, is there some
> fixed
> place that has a configuration file that says "find user configuration
> and data
> HERE" for both FF and TB? Can I repoint them to my shared partition, move
> my configuration and data files there, and operate seamlessly on either
> boot
> side? If I can do that, I could spend much more time over on Linux and much
> less time on that other system! Presumably I would have to keep version
> updates fairly closely in sync. Does anyone have any war stories to share?
> Thanks!
I do the same thing with my home system. I have a data drive (D: in
Windows, /d in Linux) that I keep my email folders on. Unfortunately,
setting this up is not an automatic process. Let me see if I can
describe what I had to do.
You could probably do something as simple as symlinking directories or
files, such as this:
======================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/.thunderbird/cccccccc.default/Mail$ ls -la *Local*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 james james 48 2007-01-19 14:46 Local Folders ->
/d/MZmail/JamesL/99999999.slt/Mail/Local Folders
======================================
I probably could have done the same with my POP mailboxes, or perhaps
there was a reason it didn't work. What I *did* do was to edit my
prefs.js file on Linux to point to the shared location on "/d" for that
mail account. This meant I had to first create the account on Linux and
let it create it's location in the .thunderbird directory. After that I
edited that prefs.js file to the alternate location, and deleted the
unneeded directory.
from prefs.js:
======================================
...
user_pref("mail.server.server2.directory-rel",
"[ProfD]../../../../d/MZmail/JamesL/999999999.slt/Mail/pop.bestweb.net");
...
======================================
If you'll notice, prefs.js has to use a *relative* path to the mail
file; it's very misleading because if you use the default location for
your mail that the programme will create for you, it will appear as a
full path, not a relative one.
You can use a symlink for your bookmarks.html file as well. But I
wouldn't suggest sharing your plugins, as not all will be cross-platform.
What the Mozilla projects need to do (at least the ones that handle
email) is allow you to define alternate locations for your email files.
They also need to accept you may be using dual boot, as well as using
more than one of their email apps (such as Seamonkey & Thunderbird).
Currently, if you migrate to Thunderbird from Mozilla Suite/Seamonkey,
thunderbird will (un)helpfully *duplicate* all your email in a new location!
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