Solution - Sharing FirefoxPortable and ThunderbirdPortable profiles directory with Linux versions of these programs

With a little work, I found a solution to a problem I was getting ready to pose as a question here. I thought I should share with others how I got this to work. It was actually more simple than some of the solutions I had previously read.

I run ThunderbirdPortable and FirefoxPortable from my USB drive. That drive is FAT32, so I don't have any of the NTFS problems others mention with Linux and NTFS. I love that John's programs do not have the gibberish name for the profile directory, as does the WinDoze version contained C:\Documents and Settings. On my USB drive, my profile directories are:

G:\Open_Source\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile
G:\Open_Source\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile

I didn't change ANYTHING on the Windows side. All I had to do was from within Linux I run the profilemanager for each program. I tested it out on Puppy Linux, but it should work with other distros. The commands are:

./firefox -profilemanager
./thunderbird -profilemanager

You must either be in the program directory, or reference the directory when you issue the command from a console prompt, such as:

/usr/local/firefox/./firefox -profilemanager
/usr/local/thunderbird/./thunderbird -profilemanager

Then for each program, I created a profile. Look for the button to set the directory. For my USB drive I entered:

/mnt/sdc1/Open_Source/FirefoxPortable/Data/profile
/mnt/sdc1/Open_Source/ThunderbirdPortable/Data/profile

The first time I created the profile, I forgot to set the directory. Your only choices are Create, Rename, Delete. There is no Edit choice. So, if you forget to set the directory, you must delete the profile and create it again.

Works like a charm. The only glitch is when you have themes or extensions that do not have Linux counterparts. When that is the case, the Linux version of Firefox or Thunderbird will just skip what it considers to be a bogus extension.

Hope this helps others,

Ed