I have a rather strange problem. I use Thunderbird as email client and have it installed on all my systems. Since I don't want to rsync the configuration files and local mail folders every time I make a change or get new mail (which is sorted automatically into different local folders using filters) I have created a NFS share on my file-server, moved the contents of ~/.thunderbird to it (and deleted that content on the other machines) and mounted the share to ~/.thunderbird.

That is working so far, I can see my mail, but I have problems with that:
- When more than one machine is powered on (Thunderbird starts automatically and is configured to check for new mail every 5 minutes) at the same time the new mails are downloaded multiple times.
- When I create new filters (for example when I create a new folder and filters because of subscribing to a new mailing list) the filtering works without problems on the machine I used to create the filters, but only on that machine. On the other machines the mails are not moved to the folder they belong in, even if I restart Thunderbird. I don't know how that is even possible.

I would really appreciate if some one can give me a hint what I am doing wrong.
Also, may be someone has already done something similar and can point me to a working solution. I would even change to a different mail client if it has the same features (most important: filter rules, RSS integration) and is able to do what I want to achieve.

Not sure I understand... Do all your machines share the same ~/.thunderbird on the NFS share ?

If that is the case I would ask your questions on a Thunderbird channel, as I don't know if the configuration "several instances of Thunderbird accessing the same .thunderbird" is supposed to work (maybe some locking mechanisms are causing problems?)

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, all machines use the share mounted to ~/.thunderbird.
Thanks for your suggestion, searching for a Thunderbird support channel now. Sometimes I forget the simple things.

What about modifying the path variable in profiles.ini on each machine to point to the profile on the share?

Something like

The machines would still be using the same profile at the same time, so I can't see the difference between this and the mounting approach.

Local IMAP server be a better option?

Or run a single instance on one machine and use X-forwarding or vnc or such to get to it from other boxes?

Tbird seems inconsitant as to what configs get read into memory or reread from disk dynamically so multi-clients on the same profile is bound to be messy.

1 members found this post helpful.

Isn't that a bit too much? I don't know much about mail-servers and IMAP, is it possible to have filter rules to sort the mail and integrate RSS feeds into that? Those two functions are essential for me.

The problem is that the machines are not always running at the same time, so this way won't work.

Yeah, I noticed that.

Dovecot is pretty light and a pretty simple setup and has good documentation.
It supports filtering but I havn't used that and don't know about RSS either.
http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Sieve

Or you could just leave one client running to do all the filtering.

Use fetchmail to grab mail from all your accounts.
You don't need to worry about SMTP, just keep using your current SMTP server.

1 members found this post helpful.

I want to do the same thing!!---I was assuming that I would use rsync. even with that, i can forsee a problem with having a file updated where the local instance of tbird was not aware of it. (I picture the code saying--"wait--i didn't change that file--who's messing with me--I think I'll go belly up...")

OK, I will look at the Fetchmail and Dovecot approach. May be I have just to use a different solution for RSS, but this really bothers me. I really like Thunderbird for having RSS integrated, so that I don't need another program just for RSS.
Nonetheless, I am somewhat surprised. I can't be the only person that wants to have synced mail on different computers, well, except pixellany as it seems.

Yes, just about everybody with more than one PC
And an IMAP server is nearly always the best way to do it.
You could even leave out the fetchmail and just have a 'master' copy of Tbird that does the mail & RSS grabbing and simply uses your IMAP server as the 'local' mailstore that it all gets filtered into.
The only thing missing is the ability to enter filter rules on any client other than the 'master', but I don't think that is a realistic goal with multiple clients anyway.

From what I have read you are totally right. I am currently trying that, but have problems with sorting the mails. If you have experience with such a setup I would appreciate your help, I opened a new thread with for my problem: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...an-6-a-947508/

The only machine running 24/7 is my file-server, which is running headless and doesn't have a GUI installed. I don't want to install a GUI just for this purpose, so currently this is not an option for me. Ask again about this in 2 days and let's see if I haven't kicked the server out of the window til then.

OK, I managed to get rid of the issues with the sorting, now it works. For some reason I don't understand I am not able to configure Thunderbird to connect to the local mail server, but i am not in the mood to figure that out. I simply changed to Claws-Mail and it is working fine with this solution.

Now I need a similar solution for RSS, but I doubt that I will find one.
Since this thread is about syncing emails I mark this as solved.

Thanks for all your helpful answers.

Claws-Mail supports RSS via the RSSyl plugin, could you not use that?

If I would use the RSSyl plugin (I already had a look at it) I had the same situation as before: Feeds marked as read or deleted on one machine would still be unread or existent on a different machine.
For the RSS feeds I tend to go to manage them via Google Reader and use a RSS reader that can sync/integrate Google Reader. So far I had a look at RSSOwl, which is basically useless on Slackware 13.37 and -current, because it needs Xulrunner version 1.9 or below, which is obsolete since Firefox 4. They describe a workaround in their FAQs, but that just crashes RSSOwl without even an error-message.
I also wanted to give Liferea a try, since it has had many good reviews, but I don't want to use a RSS reader that has half Gnome as dependencies.
I am still searching for a small program that can achieve that, but have not found anything so far.