I have a PC which is dual boot. Some days I run Windows XP and other days I run Ubuntu Linux. I want to be able to read my email no matter which O.S. I am running and that includes being able to see all my mail folders, address book and everything. This technique does all that and as an extra bonus, I can also retain my web browser settings and bookmarks across both OSes!

SUMMARY

Using Mozilla Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client, you can achieve fully cross-platform email and web browsing, you just have to put your profiles in a folder that is accessible and writable for both systems. This could be a network drive, or in my case, a local hard drive. I have partitioned my drive with:

• An NTFS partition for Windows
• An EXT3 partition for Linux
• A FAT32 partition for any shared data which needs to be accessible by both systems

The profile will need to go on the FAT32 partition which on my PC is mounted as E: under Windows and /media/sda5 under Linux.

STEPS

1. Make sure Thunderbird and Firefox are not running! I put that in bold because it is important. This will not work if you have the applications open.
2. On the shared partition, create a folder called EMail and a folder called Firefox.
3. Move your Thunderbird profile to the EMail folder. The profile is a folder full of stuff and can typically be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles on Windows or ~/.mozilla-thunderbird on Linux. It will have a funny name like “1biuu3xr.default”. I renamed mine to “adam.default” before I moved it to E:\EMail. Do this step on either Windows or Linux but not both.
4. Edit the profiles.ini file. This can be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Thunderbird on Windows and ~/.mozilla-thunderbird on Linux. You will need to change the IsRelative entry to 0 and insert the path of your new profile folder in the Path entry. Here is what mine looks like for Linux:

   [General]
   StartWithLastProfile=1
   
   [Profile0]
   Name=default
   IsRelative=0
   Path=/media/sda5/EMail/adam.default
   

   and on Windows:

   [General]
   StartWithLastProfile=1
   
   [Profile0]
   Name=default
   IsRelative=0
   Path=E:\\EMail\\adam.default
   

5. Finally, repeat steps 3 and 4 for Firefox. This time, the profile folder and profile.ini can be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox on Windows and ~/.mozilla/firefox on Linux.