Thunderbird downloads same mail again on both OS in dual boot windows 10 and Ubuntu
Hello,
I have recently set up thunderbird 60 on Ubuntu desktop which is also having windows as the alternate boot(Dual boot - windows and linux). I am sharing the same account across the two OS and the mails already downloaded on one OS, is getting downloaded again on the other OS. That is, if I have downloaded one email on windows thunderbird, the same mail is getting downloaded again in ubuntu thunderbird again. Thus I see 2 emails for each message received.
I found my problem already raised by another user, which has been archived: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../1250898|here]
In my view, the problem in the above issue thread was not resolved; instead, the workaround of setting mails to be deleted on the POP server worked for him.
For me, I cannot delete the emails from the server and adopt the solution given in the thread. Thus I have to find why this is happening. I have second account configured which does not have this problem. There seems to be some issue with the folders etc, I have tried repairing folders, compacting them and even reconfiguring the account, but I have not been successful till now. It must be some some mistake I am making during configuration or something I am missing, I am not sure.
Thanks in advance!
Chosen solution
Maybe the popstate.dat file is corrupted, so that mail repeatedly downloads.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (5)
If the account is POP on both setups, and you don't delete from server after download, the same messages are going to be downloaded on both setups. You would be better off with IMAP on both OSes so that both systems sync with the IMAP server.
With gmail POP accounts, mail can only be downloaded to one email client, unless 'recent mode' is enabled, which is why you may see a difference between two setups.
Many thanks for the quick reply! But I cannot delete the mails from the server after downloading, not for at least 2 weeks. I have set it to delete after 2 weeks automatically.
I am using POP3 account and it is not from Gmail. Also, as mentioned previously, I am having another account with similar POP3 account where it is working as expected. If I download from windows and login through ubuntu, I am able to see the downloaded mail and does not download the same copy again. And vice-versa.
Whereas, with this account only, despite the mail already downloaded, opened and read, it downloads the same mail again. This should be something to do with the profile mis-configuration.
Thanks!
And I cannot use IMAP option. And I am pretty sure other people have done such setup and used successfully. I had earlier researched before I decided to adopt this approach. Moreover, if the copy of the emails had to be downloaded separately on each platform, then it was better off maintaining the accounts with different profile and mail paths. The idea here was that when I log into windows, I should be able to access the mails which were downloaded when I was on linux; or vice-versa.
I referred to below tips: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_a_profile_between_Windows_and_Linux
Chosen Solution
Maybe the popstate.dat file is corrupted, so that mail repeatedly downloads.
Thank you! That was helpful.
In my case, the corruption was due to different account name/username being logged in this file. The account/username name started with uppercase in windows whereas it always started with lowercase letter in linux. I tried juggling several times to change to lower case username/account name/email id etc in linux, but didn't succeed. I couldn't find out what is that being logged as the header *[mailserver][name]. Finally, I removed the account in windows and reconfigured it, quite a hurdle, though, ultimately it got resolved. Now the duplicate mails are not getting downloaded and the mails are being shared between the two setups.
Thanks again!