My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
and .parentlock I could find in my profile.

What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
another instance running?
TIA

chris wrote:
> My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
> running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
> and .parentlock I could find in my profile.
> 
> What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
> another instance running?
> TIA

In my (Ubuntu) system, the lock file is:

~/mozilla-thunderbird/<something>/lock

If yours is different, you will find out why if you run thunderbird
under strace, i.e.

strace thunderbird

Robert

chris wrote:
> My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
> running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
> and .parentlock I could find in my profile.
> 
> What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
> another instance running?
> TIA

I don't know if it's relevant, but I see the same under w*ws: it happens 
when the m/c has been in standby, and the (samba) share containing the 
profile hasn't remounted correctly (quite the usual behaviour :-) ). It 
clears if I first force the mount by opening the relevant networked 
directory. The message seems really to mean tb can't create the lockfile 
- for /any/ reason whatsoever. Is your home directory nfs?

Mike Scott wrote:
> chris wrote:
>> My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
>> running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
>> and .parentlock I could find in my profile.
>>
>> What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
>> another instance running?
>> TIA
> 
> I don't know if it's relevant, but I see the same under w*ws: it happens 
> when the m/c has been in standby, and the (samba) share containing the 
> profile hasn't remounted correctly (quite the usual behaviour :-) ). It 
> clears if I first force the mount by opening the relevant networked 
> directory. The message seems really to mean tb can't create the lockfile 
> - for /any/ reason whatsoever. Is your home directory nfs?

Yes. My home is nfs, but the issue had survived a new OS install,
profile deletion and thunderbird re-install (not in that order).

I'm not sure what the exact cause was, but I moved the whole
~/.thunderbird directory to somewhere safe (rather than just the profile
as I had done previously). Then, thunderbird launched normally and I
exited the set-up wizard. So far so normal, but then copying the saved
profile into the new ~/.thunderbird and re-starting worked! The only
thing I changed was the profile.ini file to point to the right profile
directory. Weird...

It seems that something was borked in the old ~/.thunderbird directory,
but not in the profile. There are only two other files, appreg and
profile.ini, in the dir. The profile.ini differed in the right places,
but I've no idea what the appreg is for. Does anyone know?

In message <g8u0ao$4jj$2@dux.dundee.ac.uk>, chris wrote:

> My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
> running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
> and .parentlock I could find in my profile.
> 
> What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
> another instance running?
> TIA

You mean Thunderbirds are NOT Go?

Sorry, showing my age there. FAB.
-- 
Dave
mail da ve@llondel.org (without the space)
http://www.llondel.org
So many gadgets, so little time

Dave {Reply Address in.Sig} wrote:
> In message <g8u0ao$4jj$2@dux.dundee.ac.uk>, chris wrote:
> 
>> My thunderbird refuses to start claiming there is another instance of it
>> running, but there isn't. ps shows nothing and deleted both the .lock
>> and .parentlock I could find in my profile.
>>
>> What else is there that could be telling thunderbird that there is
>> another instance running?
>> TIA
> 
> You mean Thunderbirds are NOT Go?
> 
> Sorry, showing my age there. FAB.

Groan... :)

Actually, they are now. It's working again.