354674 - Sunbird using the same profile on Windows and linux

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 58647

(Calendar :: Sunbird Only, enhancement)

Description

[Salvatore Russo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060921 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060921 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.7

I am sing the same profile on Windows and Linux. This profile points to the same camendar in my hard disk (a ics file).
In my profile, I have to create two calendar (remote, Webdav, file:///path) because the path is not the same on windows and linux.

But on windows, I the linux calendar is activated and the windows one is disable, sunbird don't managed to access/create the calendar.

I am submitting this as a bug, I hope it is right.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Configure Sunbird on linux to point to a profile
2. Configure Sunbird on Windows to point to the SAME profile
3. Create a calendar entry pointing to a .ics file from linux
4. Create a calendar entry pointing to a .ics file from windows (the previous one is not accessible because the path is not understood)
5. Desactivate the windows calendar from linux, and try from linux to access/create the windows calendar... it was impossible

Comment 1

[Damian Szczepanik]

Using the same profile on two operating system is quite risky, because eg some extension are not platform independent so I'm not sure if mozilla products support ti - I mean you can try to use it this way but it is not normal behaviour.

Or at least this is not related to Sunbird product, rather Core or something

Wontfix?

Comment 2

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

The Extension Manager should be able to enable and disable incompatible extensions when the application starts.

I'd like to know more about "the path is not understood". 

I also agree this is most likely an enhancement request as most folks aren't switching between Linux and Windows frequently.

Comment 3

[Salvatore Russo]

Hi,

To explain "the path is not understood":
On windows, paths are something like that: d:/My_data/My_profile
On linux, it is solmething like: /media/my_partition/My_data/My_profile

so the same parameters can not be understood by the two OS.

I understand that is is not a high priority to work on such problems ;) But for people like me that decided to move from XP to Linux, it is very important to be able to access our calendar from both OS because only accessing it from Xp means "use XP forever".
As soon as we can explain people how to continue to use the same emails and same calendar from XP AND Linux (thanks to your wonderful apps running on all OS!), that should help.

Salvatore

Comment 4

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

I understand the difference between Windows and Unix paths, but I'm wondering where you're seeing this error, and what the exact error text or error message is.

Comment 5

[Salvatore Russo]

If I create a calendar from linux and give the path of a calendar "calensdar.ics" on my hard disk, it works find in Linux but if this calendar is activated and I open sunbird in Windows, sunbird don't shows the calendar and I can not use the "calendar windows" anymore (this region where we can activate or desactivate calendars).
Same behaviour if I do that from windows XP to linux.

I have to create two calendars, one from windows XP, one from Linux and be carefull to ever desactivate them because if the XP calendar is activated and I run Sunbird from Linux, that will make Sunbird unusable.

I hope it helps.

Salvatore

Comment 6

[cmtalbert]

We are going to mark this as an enhancement (which it is) and set it to depend on bug 58647 (which it does).

In the meantime, Salvatore, you might be able to use the following work around.

Create a linux and a windows profile.  Then set up the ics files appropriately in each profile with the proper paths.  Since both profiles will use the same ics file, this should enable you to see your events on both operating systems and not have to remember which calendar to activate and which to de-activate.

Comment 7

[Salvatore Russo]

Hi Clint,

That's a perferct workaround. I was using it (now, I only use Linux). But if the calendar_linux(pointing on the ics file) is activated when you run Sunbird in windows, Sunbird will become crazy because it will try to load the file "/media/blabla/calendar.ics" but will not understand what it is ;)

But don't worry about this minor "nice to have feature" if it is only impacting few users.

Salvatore

Comment 8

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

IMO this does not depend on bug 58647, but is a duplicate of this bug.

Comment 9

[Moritz Strübe]

Please un-dup this bug, as it's NOT a dup of bug 58647. This bug is for Sunbird/Ligtning, while bug 58647 is backend/priofile. These are totally different things. You can fix the backend/profile-bug by using relative paths or different configuration files, while for this bug a differnt XPI must be created (you must basically merge the win and lin xpis an).