Who is this suited to?

People still in the transition phase from Windows to Linux, and still dual-booting, and whose email, etc is on their Windows drive.

Hopefully this approach will help people transition, such that booting Puppy can become the chosen option more and more often.

This How To is written (I hope) to suit the beginner.

The examples given are for a frugal install of PizzaPup 3 (which is based on Puppy 2.12) dual-booting with Win XP Home. Other permutations are probably similar, but I haven't tried them.

Who is this not suited to?

People whose email, etc is already on their Linux drive.

Problems:

A. Old emails are on a Windows email program, so you still need to boot Windows to access them.

B. Browser settings, bookmarks, etc, are in Windows and not in Puppy.

Solutions:

Use a common email client in Windows and Puppy and share the data between both.

Similarly use a common browser in Windows and Puppy and share the data between both.

Thunderbird and Firefox are suitable candidates as they can use the same profile in both operating systems.

In an ideal world you just need to install both in both operating systems and then edit 2 lines in 2 text files, so it should be very easy and you will spend more time rebooting 2 or 3 times than doing any actual work.

Email Method:

1. Install Thunderbird in Windows. It will offer to import all your emails, address book, accounts, etc from other email programs, such as Outlook Express.

2.a) If Puppy has read-write acces to your Windows hard drive, browse to the folder where Thunderbird keeps its "profile", and note the folder. In Win XP it will be something like:

If you are using a reasonably recent version of Puppy (2.02 or later, I think) this has read-write capability on NTFS drives so no problem. If your Windows drive is FAT32, then you're also good to go.

2.b) If Puppy does not have read-write access to your Windows hard drive, then you need to copy the folder where Thunderbird keeps its profile to a a drive or partition that both Windows and Puppy can read and write, and then make both Thunderbirds use that profile. See lots of info on the Puppy websites or the references at the end of this How To for advice on partitions. I will assume that someone smart enough and confident enough to create such a partition can pick and choose from this How To, and I won't provide further advice for this case.

2.c) You need to make sure the drive where the profile is stored is mounted automatically in Puppy. For my system this happens automatically. To find out, from a clean boot and without doing anything else, use RoxFiler, and click up one to the / directory, then click mnt, then click home. If it finds all the stuff in your Windows C:\ drive, then you're good; if not then check the Puppy websites or the references at the end of this How To.

3. Install Thunderbird in Puppy. For example, there is a dotpup for Thunderbird. I have version 1.0.6. If you have no email in Puppy, it won't try to import anything (I think).

You might be able to use a newer version from the Mozilla website, but I don't know if it is compatible with Puppy or will share a profile happily.

4. Now you tell Thunderbird in Puppy to use the profile that the Windows Thunderbird uses. You do this by changing the profiles.ini file in Puppy, as follows:

4.a) Use RoxFiler to find the profiles.ini file. Click up one to the / directory, then click root, then click the button to show hidden files, then click .thunderbird (note the dot in front of thunderbird), and you will find the file.

4.b) Open the file with a text editor, e.g. Geany (just clicking the file will probably open it in the deault text editor). It probably looks like:

As a precaution, without changing it do Save As, and name it something like profiles_backup.ini, just in case you mess it up.

4.c) Now re-open the profiles.ini file. You need to edit 2 parts, the IsRelative=1 needs to change to 0, and the Path needs to be changed to the folder you found in step 2.a or 2.b as appropriate. It should look like:

Note that the Path= line is all one line, right the way through to .default.

Note also that all the / symbols are the opposite way round to the Windows path. If you have them the Windows way round \ then when starting Thunderbird in Puppy it won't find the profile and thus tries to create a new one and overwrites the one you had just created in the profiles.ini file.

4.d) If all has gone according to plan, when you restart Thunderbird all your old email will be there, along with the addresses, accounts, and even the spam filters. The only thing it doesn't carry across is the passwords. A few seconds thought makes you realise that this is an excellent security feature and you won't begrudge typing them in again.

4.e) Now do a send and receive, note any new messages, close Puppy, reboot into Windows, start Thunderbird, and you should see those new messages.

Browser Solution:

The method is very similar to the email method above.

If you don't already use Firefox in Windows, install it. It will import all your bookmarks from Internet Explorer, and probably from another browser if it is set as the default.

Install Firefox in Puppy.

Use Rox Filer to find the profiles.ini file. Click up one to the / directory, then click root, then click the button to show hidden files, then click .mozilla (note the dot in front of mozilla), then click firefox, and you will find the file.

Open the file with a text editor. It probably looks like:

And you want it to look like this, i.e. IsRelative=0 and your Windows path:

Now when you start Firefox it should have all your bookmarks, etc. As a bonus, it will even have your toolbars in your Windows arrangement.

Conclusion:

With this approach, whichever system you boot, you should have a consistent, up-to-date set of data, with no need to try to keep things in synch, and no need to boot one particular OS just to get a certain email.

Problems/Drawbacks:

This How To is given without any liability. It worked for me, but if it doesn't work for you, then too bad, I'm sorry, let me know, I'll try to help. Unless you have a good current back-up, don't mess with something if you can't afford to lose it.

This method will ignore any existing Puppy Firefox email settings and Thunderbird bookmarks. They will presumably still be in the relevant folders, it's just that Firefox/Thunderbird have been told to look elsewhere, but I don't currently know how to semi-automatically merge them. You could open the bookmarks.html file, click the links, then bookmark them - it's a bit crude, sorry.

Similarly, if you already have email in your Puppy system, I don't know how you can merge that. It can probably be exported to a file or files (if already using Thunderbird in Puppy, then do this before changing the profiles.ini file) then imported into Thunderbird after changing the profiles.ini file. There may be issues with duplicate folder names, I don't know.

Also Thunderbird isn't a small program, at least in Puppy terms.

There have been reports of NTFS drives getting messed up after being written to by Puppy. Whether this is true or not, and whether it is Puppy's fault or Windows' fault, or a hardware fault, who knows? Whatever, like any data, if it's critical then a regular back-up of the folder (and its sub-folders) containing your profile should be performed.

For those people who back-up Puppy by simply making a copy of their pup_save file, this email and browser data are not within the pup_save and thus need to be backed up separately.

I have read that Linux can't read file names with spaces, such as Documents and Settings, but it works OK for me.

Other Options:

You could also try to symlink the relevant files and/or folders in Puppy to those in Windows, but I haven't tried that.

Credits:

I pinched the basic ideas from the following and then rearranged/tailored them to suit.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HowToShareMozillaProfileBetweenWindowsAndPuppy∞
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_a_profile_between_Windows_and_Linux∞
http://sillydog.org/netscape/kb/linuxwindows.html∞
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8761∞
and probably other people/places I have forgotten, if so, then sorry.

Rickrandom, 13 Jan 2007