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How do I get Linux to find address books in dual boot Win 7/Linux system

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  • Last reply by Matt

Ausron46
Ausron46
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I use a dual-boot Linux Mint 19/Win7 system, with the latest Thunderbird on both. For convenience, I have moved the Win 7 Thunderbird profile to a new location, and referred Thunderbird in both systems to this location, using "Edit/account settings/Server settings/local directory/browse" in Thunderbird, and selecting the folder where the profile is stored. This worked perfectly in Windows, but in Linux I get everything bar the address books! E-mails sent and received in Win show up in Linux, E-mails sent and received in Linux show up in Win. In my case, the Local directory used for both Win 7 and Linux versions of Thunderbird is "E:\Profiles\Thunderbird\nsub6ver.default\Mail\mail.skymesh.com-1.au", except that in Linux "E:" is replaced by "Media/ausron/Win 7 Data/". The address books are stored in the "nsub6ver.default" folder where Thunderbird Windows manages to find them, but Thunderbird Linux does not! As I recall, Linux Mint 17 with earlier versions of Thunderbird did not have this issue, and, though I suspect that the problem is with Thunderbird, I cannot prove it. Any suggestions?

I use a dual-boot Linux Mint 19/Win7 system, with the latest Thunderbird on both. For convenience, I have moved the Win 7 Thunderbird profile to a new location, and referred Thunderbird in both systems to this location, using "Edit/account settings/Server settings/local directory/browse" in Thunderbird, and selecting the folder where the profile is stored. This worked perfectly in Windows, but in Linux I get everything bar the address books! E-mails sent and received in Win show up in Linux, E-mails sent and received in Linux show up in Win. In my case, the Local directory used for both Win 7 and Linux versions of Thunderbird is "E:\Profiles\Thunderbird\nsub6ver.default\Mail\mail.skymesh.com-1.au", except that in Linux "E:" is replaced by "Media/ausron/Win 7 Data/". The address books are stored in the "nsub6ver.default" folder where Thunderbird Windows manages to find them, but Thunderbird Linux does not! As I recall, Linux Mint 17 with earlier versions of Thunderbird did not have this issue, and, though I suspect that the problem is with Thunderbird, I cannot prove it. Any suggestions?

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Matt
Matt
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The usual approach on dual boot systems is to point to a single profile folder. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=profiles-tb#w_moving-a-profile

I really have no idea how you will manage it on your setup.

Ausron46
Ausron46 Question owner
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Matt, I have linked Thunderbird in both Windows and Linux to the same profile, stored on my Windows Data partition. This worked perfectly, except for the address books in Linux, so, I took a punt and copied the abook.mab and history.mab files to the Thunderbird profile stored in the default location in Linux: ("ausron/Thunderbird/x11vasea.default"). This worked, so it seems that Thunderbird must look at both profile folders as it starts up!! It gets all the current E-mails from the location shared with Windows, and gets the address books from the default Linux profile! This does, however, mean that I will have to keep the address book files in the Linux profile updated regularly, since it will not get them from the shared profile location. If I work out how to avoid this, I will tell all.