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Thunderbird on Linux with two users sharing an email address

g.p.merrick
g.p.merrick
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My wife and I share an email address, and use a Linux Mint computer with separate logins. I had it set up so that if either of us opened Thunderbird from our own login we could see and send the emails I did this by having a shared folder at Home level which contained the Thunderbird folder I think copied from my login. I then modified the Profile.ini files in each login to point to the shared folder and shared file within it. I have had to rebuild the computer, and cannot get this to work again. It works from the login which I set up first, but when I try to start it from the other login it complains that Thunderbird is running, even though I closed it before swapping users. I have tried rebooting the computer and going straight to the second login with the same result. Is there a standard way of doing this? Any help greatly appreciated.

My wife and I share an email address, and use a Linux Mint computer with separate logins. I had it set up so that if either of us opened Thunderbird from our own login we could see and send the emails I did this by having a shared folder at Home level which contained the Thunderbird folder I think copied from my login. I then modified the Profile.ini files in each login to point to the shared folder and shared file within it. I have had to rebuild the computer, and cannot get this to work again. It works from the login which I set up first, but when I try to start it from the other login it complains that Thunderbird is running, even though I closed it before swapping users. I have tried rebooting the computer and going straight to the second login with the same result. Is there a standard way of doing this? Any help greatly appreciated.

All Replies (2)

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Thunderbird must not have completely finished all background process when you shut it down. So it's marker says it's still operating. Sometimes this can occur if you exit Thunderbird and shut down computer too quickly - maybe in your case you tried to logon too quickly.


Fix: In 'profile name' folder, look for and delete this file: 'parent.lock'

It will get recreated when you restart Thunderbird.

Is there any reason why you don't have separate profiles? Each profile can be set up to access the same email address/mail account. So in effect they are independent of each other and no one needs to share anything. If you set up as imap for both then each will have the same view as displayed via webmail account. Then if each of you have separate folder where you store your own emails, you do not have to subscribe to see each others folders which makes it more personalised even when sharing same email address.

g.p.merrick
g.p.merrick Question owner
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Thank you for your reply, deleting parent.lock didn't make any difference. You comment about having separate profiles made me think. I think we started with separate profiles, but used pop not imap. I think that meant when one had read the email the other couldn't see it. With imap that shouldn't be a problem I think. I will experiment.