LMDE-Vista Calendar Dilemma [SOLVED]

[PaulW]

I apologize in advance for the following long-winded post, but I felt it necessary to provide adequate details in order to get some help.

I am running LMDE/Vista (both 64-bit) dual boot on my laptop. My goal here is to be able to access my Thunderbird mail files and Google calendars from either platform. Here's what I have installed:

Vista:

• Thunderbird 3.1.7
  Lightning 1.02b
  Provider for Google Calendar 0.7.1

LMDE:

• Thunderbird 3.1.7 (x86_64)
  Lightning 1.0.2b
  Provider for Google Calendar 0.7

• Icedove 3.0.11 (x86_64)
  Iceowl 1.0b1
  Provider for Google Calendar 0.6b1

Thunderbird works just fine on Windows and both Thunderbird and Icedove are fine on LMDE. I have set up my thunderbird.ini and icedove.ini files in LMDE to both point to the same location on my Windows partition. As such, all three versions read the same mail folders. That's great. So far, so good.

My dilemma comes when I try to use Lightning/Iceowl in LMDE:
Lightning just doesn't seem to work at all with Thunderbird. It displays a blank calendar. I cannot add either a local or network (Google) calendar. The right-click menu opens OK to display "New Calendar...", "Find Calendar...", etc. However, none of the menu items execute anything. I've searched around and found that Lightning doesn't work in the Linux 64-bit environment. The Icedove/Iceowl combo works great, linking very quickly to my Google calendars. Note: When opening Icedove after running Thunderbird, I have to uninstall Lightning and Provider for GC and reinstall Iceowl and Provider for GC when starting Icedove. This uninstall/reinstall has to be done again when going from Icedove on LMDE back to Thunderbird on Vista.

So, it seems that Thunderbird/Lightning/Provider for GC works just fine on the Vista platform. And Thunderbird/Icedove/Iceowl are equally great (actually, a bit better) on the LMDE platform. The problem is I cannot switch between Thunderbird/Lightning/Provider for GC on Vista and Icedove/Iceowl/Provider for GC on LMDE without uninstalling and reinstalling the calendar and Google add-ons each time I change platforms. I suppose this has something to do with using the same profile folders for both systems.

Anyone have suggestions on how to make Thunderbird/Lightning/Google Calendar on Vista play nicely with Icedove/Iceowl/Google Calendar on LMDE? Would I have better luck with Lightning on LMDE 32-bit?

[cwsnyder]

I have a suggestion, but you may not like it. Make a shared partition between Vista and LMDE which is FAT and install your shared Thunderbird and Lightning profiles on it. That is the recommended manner of sharing data between Windows and Linux, because even though Windows and Linux can read and sometimes write to NTFS, file ownership and permissions get scrambled (part of NTFS and EXT2/3/4 filesystems, but not FAT file systems) when they attempt to share data files. I'm not saying you can get it to work even then!

There is a reason most data sharing is done on-line or on a file-server rather than on the same hard disk. Best would be to use a Google calendar compatible server application on a file-server.

[PaulW]

@cwsnyder

Thanks for the suggestion; however, I have had no problem using the mail files on the Vista partition from the Linux platform. So I'd rather not go the FAT partition route. Here's what I ended up doing:

I abandoned the notion of having both Linux/Icedove and Vista/Thunderbird share the same profile, but I want to be able to share the mail folders and address books. I allowed Icedove to create a new profile on Linux and then created each mail account - being sure to pint the Local directory setting to the Vista mail folders:
/media/VistaData/Users/Paul/Thunderbird/Profiles/Mail/FOLDER-NAME.

Iceowl (calendar) & Provider for Google Calendar worked just fine on the Linux platform and Lightning & Provider for Google Calendar works OK ont the Vista platform (they're each looking at on-line calendars). Don't think I'll want to explore actually sharing the local calendar from the Vista partition.

My next challenge was how to use the Vista/Thunderbird address books on Linux/Icedove. After doing some additional digging, I decided to create a symbolic link in the .icedove/########.Paul folder to the address book files on Vista. First, I deleted the address Linux address book(s), then the command I used for the Personal Address Book was:

Code: Select all

ln -s /media/VistaData/Users/Paul/Thunderbird/Profiles/abook.mab abook.mab

and similar for the Collected Address Book (history.mab). As a result, Icedove followed the symbolic link blindly to the Vista address books.

To sum it up, I am using Linux/Icedove with new mail accounts pointing to the mail folders on Vista/Thunderbird. Linux/Iceowl and Provider for Google Calendar connects with my Google Calendars. I am not using a local calendar on Vista/Thunderbird or Linux/Iceowl.