This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Share profile Windows and Ubuntu

more options

Hi

I use Thunderbird on Windows (now 11) for 16 years now. Currently I have Thunderbird version 128.1.1. I would like to share profile between Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 24.04) installations on same machine. Profile folder is in a ntfs partition accessible both from Ubuntu (automatically mounted) and Windows. I managed to edit profile.ini file to point to right profile folder. On Windows evenrything workes fine. When I try to open Thunderbird in Ubuntu I get empty folder list and no account information in configuration. In the profile folder there ale many files created with names ending with corrupted are created (like folderTree.json.XXX.corrupt). Another try to open Thunderbird ends with message that profile is already in use. Any advice? Maybe I should debug starting Thunderbird (if yes let me know how to do that).

Thanks in advance. Marcin

Hi I use Thunderbird on Windows (now 11) for 16 years now. Currently I have Thunderbird version 128.1.1. I would like to share profile between Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 24.04) installations on same machine. Profile folder is in a ntfs partition accessible both from Ubuntu (automatically mounted) and Windows. I managed to edit profile.ini file to point to right profile folder. On Windows evenrything workes fine. When I try to open Thunderbird in Ubuntu I get empty folder list and no account information in configuration. In the profile folder there ale many files created with names ending with corrupted are created (like folderTree.json.XXX.corrupt). Another try to open Thunderbird ends with message that profile is already in use. Any advice? Maybe I should debug starting Thunderbird (if yes let me know how to do that). Thanks in advance. Marcin

All Replies (3)

more options

When I had duel-boot I had problems if the system I wasn't using had only been hibernated rather than fully closed down.

There could also be problems with Linux and Windows not using the same systems for ownership and other attributes. For instance Linux doesn't have an Archive attribute and Windows doesn't have an Executable one.

Helpful?

more options

Thanks for reply. I will just add that when I try to open Thunderbird for the first time with path to profile used for many years on Windows, there are many files with 0 bytes created with names: folderTree.json.corrupt folderTree.json-XXXX.corrupt handlers.json-XXXX.corrupt prefs-XXXX.js virtualFolders-XXXX.dat where XXXX are numbers from 1 to 9999.

Maybe I should run Thunderbird in a debug mode to see what is the problem? How can I do that?

Helpful?

more options

For Troubleshoot Mode press Alt-h and choose it from the drop-down menu that appears.

Helpful?

Sual ver

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.