Sharing gnupg folder on dual boot machine

[radly]

I have dual-booted my laptop with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. I'm trying to make Enigmail work on both OSes using a common gnupg folder. I have set up Thunderbird so that it shares a common profile via a shared partition, meaning that all my mail activity is fully visible under both OSes. The gnupg folder is also in that partition, and running "gpg --list-keys" on each OS produces the same results. I install Enigmail on the Windows machine and it works. I boot into Linux, launch Thunderbird, and am met immediately with an error report saying that Enigmail is incompatible and must be uninstalled. But I cannot uninstall it--I can only disable it. So my burning question is how do I clean up this mess and install Enigmail so that it operates on both OSes?

[patrick]

Your problem is most likely that you installed Thunderbird & Enigmail on Linux from the Ubuntu repositories. This means that Enigmail is installed globally on Linux. On Windows, you'll have Enigmail installed in your profile, such that you end up with two different versions of Enigmail on Linux. I assume that you have a 64-bit version of Ubuntu installed, otherwise this wouldn't be a problem.

In theory you have 2 solutions:

1. Use a version of Enigmail that contains binary libraries for all platforms
2. Uninstall Enigmail on Windows and install it globally

Solution 1 is only possible if you want to hack around the XPI, so I'd say the only option for the moment is 2.

To install Enigmail globally:

1. Uninstall Enigmail from the Addons manager and exit Thunderbird
2. Locate the "extensions" directory in your Thunderbird installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\extensions)
3. Copy the Enigmail XPI file into the extensions directory.
4. Start Thunderbird. You'll be asked if you want to install Enigmail gobally.

See also the corresponding aricle on MozillaZine