Using Thunderbird from XP/Linux dualboot

Factual Questions
1

I’ve had Linux dualbooted on my laptop for a while, but only in the last week got wireless networking to work*. I have Thunderbird working on XP, and downloaded Thunderbird for Linux, although I haven’t figured out how to install it yet. So that’s question 1. The possibly harder question is that I want to be able to access my mail from both XP and Linux, and have all the mail show up under both. Preferably without having to re-download each email twice.

My laptop is a Compaq Presario from a few years ago. Windows XP is on an NTFS main partition, there’s a FAT partition (FAT32, I think) accessible under both XP and Linux, and then Linux on its own partition. Right now Thunderbird for XP is installed on the NTFS partition, though of course I could reinstall it on the FAT partition if necessary. Is there a way to have both installations point to the same directory on the FAT partition, so I’d have the same email when switching between the two OSs?

Softball question three: How do I change the order of the OSs in the dualboot screen? I had figured this out when I had 7.x, but as long as I’m starting a thread anyway, might as well ask.

(*)I had Ubuntu 7.x for a year or so and couldn’t figure it out, but I just installed 9.x (where 7.x had been). Even then it took me a while to notice the little five-bars icon at the top. Might have been that easy in 7.x all along, but whatever.

2

I was the t-bird administrator for my old workplace. It uses a particular directory to store the email. If you have two different applications of t-bird on your machine, as long as they use the same path to where the email is stored, it should be fine. IF linux and XP versions of Tbird read and store email in the same format.

Another option is set tbird to not delete email from the server. Then, it should be the same except for the local storage of sent mail, drafts, etc.

3

assuming you’re using ubuntu or any debian-based system, you can install thunderbird directly from the repositories (ie. delete what you downloaded, unnecessary). you can do this via System>Admin>Synaptic or from the command line (quicker):


sudo apt-get install thunderbird

you can access the same mail from both windows and linux installations of thunderbird simply by having them both read from the same mail directory. you can create a neutral fat32 partition for this, but nowadays it’s unnecessary as both linux and windows have gotten much better lately at reading and writing ntfs and ext3 lately (the latter via 3rd party software). it might be easiest to store the mail on your existing windows ntfs drive, and make the linux mail directory a symbolic link to it.

another option is to use IMAP for your mail instead of POP3, if that’s something your mail provider offers. this would allow you to access the same mail from either of your dual boot scenarios, as well as any other devices you wish to use in the future - other computers, iphone, etc. (ftr, gmail offers IMAP support)

you can change the boot order (and default OS, etc) by editing the config file for your bootloader. most likely this will be GRUB, in which case on the linux OS you want to edit this file: /boot/grub/menu.lst (you’ll need to do this as super user), ie.


sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

this file usually comes fairly well commented, but basically each OS will have it’s own stanza near the bottom of the file:



title		Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid		3cd67938-d1da-497e-9190-b5f0c5b22d95
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=3cd67938-d1da-497e-9190-b5f0c5b22d95 ro quiet splash 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
uuid		3cd67938-d1da-497e-9190-b5f0c5b22d95
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=3cd67938-d1da-497e-9190-b5f0c5b22d95 ro  single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title		Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
uuid		3cd67938-d1da-497e-9190-b5f0c5b22d95
kernel		/boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

re-arrange these stanzas however you want them to appear in your boot menu. you may also want to change the values of “default” and “timeout” (if you change “default” remember that it counts starting at 0)

4

Use your package manager to install software. On Ubuntu, synaptic (GUI, as opposed to aptitude or something else) is installed by default. Really, don’t download and install software you don’t have to. (On preview: you can use apt-get also, as fubbleskag says.)

Linux plays very nicely with other OSes. It can read/write NTFS out of the box, so there’s no longer a need for a FAT32 partition. As Superhal says, you just have to use a common configuration.

A lot of progress has been made on wireless, so it’s likely that it wasn’t working properly on 7.x.

5

Thanks all, I seem to have it working. I ended up using the Add/Remove… menu item under the Ubuntu icon in the upper left corner of the screen to install the programs. Not sure if that’s just a shortcut or GUI for one of the solutions given above. I had to copy the Thunderbird Profiles directory onto the FAT partition and manually change the Thunderbird paths in the settings, because I use hibernate under XP, and Linux says it can’t mount a hibernated partition. But it seems to be working, I have all my old mail, and am able to send and receive new mail. I still need to check that new mail shows up under XP, and remove the old Profiles directory, just to be sure, but I’m fairly confident it’s all working like I want.

I’m saving a copy of this thread, to remind me how to use sudo. I used that to install emacs and to edit menu.lst, and that worked as well.

Thanks again.