Sahring FF and TB Config

SHARING FIREFOX and THUNDERBIRD CONFIG
( in Windows and Linux )

There are many people dual booting and running Firefox or Thunderbird both in Linux and Windows.
To be able to share bookmarks, favorites and mail between the two operating systems seems to be the last step to computer nirvana. Imagine getting mail in Linux and being able to reply to that same mail in Windows . . . . or just having one set of bookmarks between the two OS.

Our friend Boilertech found the answer and wrote us this next Tip:

QUOTE (boilertech @ forum)

First thing you need is to have a dual boot system set up. I have Windows and Pclinux on mine but this should also work with multiple linux OS's.
Next needed is a Fat32 partition (not needed for multi linux OS's). And read write permision. For help making partitions in Windows. For making partitions in linux run DiskDrake.
This is what my fstab looks like for my fat32 partition.

CODE

/dev/hda7 /mnt/Moz_Share vfat umask=0,user,codepage=850,iocharset=iso8859-1,exec 0 0

The part (/mnt/Moz_Share) is the way that I mount that partition. You would need to change this to your preferences. For more information on fstab click here. Then we create a directory to put the shared data in. After you have read/write permision, use the mkdir command to make a folder, or as I did, right click and choose create folder in your file manager. I used my name (just in case there were to be multiple users). So my directory tree looks like this

CODE

/mnt/Moz_Share/Mike

Under that directory I created two more. One for FireFox and one for ThunderBird.

CODE

[mike@localhost ~]$ cd /mnt/Moz_Share/Mike
[mike@localhost Mike]$ ls
FireFox/ Thunderbird/
[mike@localhost Mike]$

Now for the fun part. You need to copy your data folder either from your Windows or Linux into the new folder. In linux the mozilla data folder is hidden /home/mike/.mozilla/firefox/b4vptfrz.default. Yours will be different than /b4vptfrz but will end in .default. In Windows it will be Documents and Settings\Michael\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Yours will be under your own users name not Michael (unless that is your name <g> ). I copied my /b4vptfrz.default folder to the new folder

CODE

$ cp ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default /mnt/Moz_Share/Mike/FireFox

Follow the same for ThunderBird

CODE

$ cp ~/.thunderbird/*.default /mnt/Moz_Share/Mike/ThunderBird

Now we edit the profiles.ini file to guide it to the new data location. This file is in both directories one for ThunderBird and one for Mozilla. This is what my profiles.ini looks like in Linux. Thunderbird;

CODE

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/home/mike/Moz_Share/Mike/Thunderbird/6qayv6i6.default

Mozilla;

CODE

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/home/mike/Moz_Share/Mike/FireFox/b4vptfrz.default

This is what my profiles.ini looks like in Windows. Thunderbird;

CODE

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile1]
Name=Michael
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\Mike\Thunderbird\6qayv6i6.default
Default=1

Mozilla;

CODE

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\Mike\FireFox\b4vptfrz.default

Note: that this line IsRelative=1 is changed to IsRelative=0 and the Path= line now directs to the new data folder location (under windows the / should be \). Also make sure the Path= points to your path. Do both profiles.ini files one for Mozilla and one for ThunderBird in Windows and in Linux.
Now enjoy.

Thanks Boilertech for testing and writing this up for us . . . . . this is great info !

Bruno

-- May 14 2006 --