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Sync TB settings on multiple machines

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by Zenos

Lizat
Lizat
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I use TB on more than one machine. I want exactly the same installation on eac, for example this includes: Accounts, Filters, Add-ons and their settings.

Is there anything out there that will do this type of sync ? So, for example: 

     if I add a new filter when logged in on my laptop, can I get it added to my home desktop?
     If I add a new add-on to my TB installation on my desktop, can I gate it added to my laptop?

Or is there at least a manual work-around?

Liz

I use TB on more than one machine. I want exactly the same installation on eac, for example this includes: Accounts, Filters, Add-ons and their settings. Is there anything out there that will do this type of sync ? So, for example: if I add a new filter when logged in on my laptop, can I get it added to my home desktop? If I add a new add-on to my TB installation on my desktop, can I gate it added to my laptop? Or is there at least a manual work-around? Liz

All Replies (3)

Zenos
Zenos
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The settings you list (filters, add-ons) are stored in your profile. So for that to happen, you'd need to use one profile and somehow make it available to all your machines.

Users have tried putting the profile onto a network share for use within a LAN, but this seems to be unreliable. Note that it isn't designed for multiple concurrent access; there is a locking mechanism expressly to protect the profile while it is in use.

Others have tried keeping the profile in a share such as DropBox. Profiles are big (typically multi-gigabyte in size), and you will spend a lot of time waiting for uploads and downloads, and this may not work if you use a mix of operating systems.

Yet another approach is to use the portable version of Thunderbird, so that the program and its profile live on a USB memory stick, or similar. However the portable variant of Thunderbird is specific to Windows, so again, won't suit non-Windows users. I don't think you can easily do this with regular Thunderbird, as the location of its core configuration file, profiles.ini, is hard-coded.

You can quite easily install Thunderbird and set it to use a copied profile, so it will start out identical to the original, but keeping multiple copies in step is going to be hard work.

Lizat
Lizat Question owner
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It's a shame as I imagine I cannot be the only one who has a laptop, a desktop and at least one work machine. I was imagining something like the browser synchonising that is common now so that bookmarks and add-ons are kept synced between instances and machines.

An well, I'll continue doing it the hard way!

Liz

Zenos
Zenos
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Add-ons and bookmarks are a few megabytes, at most.

An email store runs into multi-gigabytes. So the logistics of porting an email client's profile about are formidable.

Things like filters require absolute consistency in your folder structures and pathnames. And I wouldn't want all my work-related stuff reflected in my home machine, nor vice versa. In many cases, a work email account would not be accessible from home, so would be an awful lot of deadwood on the personal computer.