Thunderbird refuses to run, it says it's already running

[the dsc]

I'm in a weird situation. I think it all started due to some major newbieness of massively changing the permissions of folders on my home directory, but I'm not so sure.

Anyway, at one point, thunderbird was running, but was saying that the servers were not accepting my passwords. I thought it was kwallet, but as it still can read my passwords on kopete, it has to be ok.

Eventually I tried to close and open again, and then thunderbird started giving me this message, saying that the process was running, that I should either close the processo or restart the system.

I didn't found any running process obviously related to thunderbird, but I know that at least on firefox there's an empty file that is somewhat like an indicator of an already-running instance, hindering attempts of running new instances. I think that it is .parentlock. I've deleted it (actually I moved it somewhere else, as I was not totally sure), but it still gives me the same message.

Finally, I've tried the newbie-proof method, which is uninstall and install again. Somehow, didn't work and I still get the same message.

Any ideas?

[oz]

Make sure Thunderbird is closed, then try renaming your old /home/username/.thunderbird directory to something like .thunderbirdOLD, then restart Thunderbird.

You'll need to setup your email account(s) and other settings again, but if this works, at least you'll have a working Thunderbird.

If it works, you should be able to retrieve any saved email from the OLD account.

[the dsc]

Thanks for replying. Actually, I've done something similar: I've created another user, and this one was able to make thunderbird run. Then I tryed to copy all the content from the original user's thunderbird folder, and "he" had the same problem. At least is something within the thunderbird user folder, rather something more intricated somewhere else. If I choose to go that way, all I have to do is just copy the "mail" folder and perhaps a few other picked more cautiously.

I'm thinking about "moving" from my current user anyway, since it has some bug with "his" KDE or kicker menu, the right button working exactly as the left one, which is also solved in another users.

The sad thing is that I'd have to make again tons of boring configurations, such as those necessary to konqueror having "detailed list" as default viewmode and other things...

I think I'm going to do that your way, sticking with the same user, and eventually I'll find out exactly what is hindering the right button on kmenu to work properly... I'll waste less time...

[the dsc]

humm.... for some reason, renaming the thunderbird directory for the same user isn't working... when I try to execute thunderbird, it simply does not...

Aren't there some sort of command line arguments through which I would receive some sort of "verbose", lots of details of what is going on? Usually when I start anything through konsole, at least a few text lines would appear. But with thunderbird I just get a new prompt line, pretty much as if I've just pressed "enter"... weird...

[oz]

If deleting/renaming the Thunderbird directory and then restarting doesn't work, and trying to start Thunderbird from a terminal doesn't give any clues/errors, the only other thing I can think of that might work is to try rebooting your machine, then checking your home directory to make certain the hidden ~/.thunderbird directory does NOT exist, then try reinstalling Thunderbird once again.

[the dsc]

Somehow, I've managed to fix almost anything, I've tryed many things, some with weird results, such as folders that would take forever to load, showing only the "busy" cursor... but now, the only thing that isn't working is the password of a single account, which I'm sure I still know, since I can log through webmail...

It's perhaps more a matter of some sort of witchcraft or santeria curse than informatics.


edit: apparently Yahoo had some issues with the beta web interface and pop...... now everything works just fine!