Thunderbird: Sharing email data across operating systems
(J C Nash – started 20090918)
If you have a dual boot system or multiple computers, then it is useful to be able to use a single email client on each system you use AND have access to the same data. This is particularly helpful if you use POPmail, which downloads mail to a “local” file store.
Caveats:
1) There are several options for copying or linking files. These may have different implications.
2) I have not tried networked drive storage (but would like to – I have a Koolu on my LAN).
Starting situation
You have one system on which Thunderbird (I've been using version 2.0). In my case Ubuntu Hardy. I want to migrate to Ubunut Jaunty and put it on another disk or disk partition.
Recipe 1:
I installed Tbird in Jaunty, and started a setup, but exited as soon as I had provided a “name” (my email account name). Then I made sure I could access /home/myname on the Hardy system. I use a 2 pane file manager to do this (Gnome-commander, emelfm2 or mc). If I have the Hardy system mounted as
/media/hardy
(your system WILL BE DIFFERENT)
then I want to find the (hidden) subdirectory
/media/hardy/home/myname/.mozilla-thunderbird
and particularly note the account directory – on mine it was ne6rajhw.default
On the Jaunty side, I erase contents of
/home/myname/.mozilla-thunderbird
I create a link to the hardy account
ln -s ne6rajhw.default /media/hardy/.mozilla-thunderbird/ne6rajhw.default
and copy the profiles.ini across.
The last step is to make the local storage agree. On my system I store local (downloaded) mail in /home/Mail on the hardy side. In Tbird, if I look in Edit/Acccount_Settings/Local folders, I see /home/Mail/Local. This will get messy on Jaunty, so on the jaunty side, I create (as root) a link in /home
cd /home ln -s /media/hardy/home/Mail Mail
Other comments and suggestions welcome, especially for networked storage.
I am about to set up a similar common email for my wife on a Win/Lin dual boot netbook. I've done this before much as above, but details may need to be confirmed.
JN