I'm new to linux. I'm running Fedora Core 3 and I'm trying to get some basics down. I unzipped/tarred the thunderbird-1.0.tar.gz into /usr/lib which created a thunderbird folder. I can run thunderbird from here. I then created a hard link in /usr/bin using ln (source) (dest).

This created the hard link but when I type just thunderbird in the console I get

Cannot find Mozilla runtime directory. Exiting.

I am trying to learn by looking around and seeing how other programs are configured and located within the file system. As far as I can tell firefox is distributed the same way but I have no trouble running firefox by typing just firefox in the console.

Please help me understand what is happening and how to fix it.

Thanks,
Adam

Hi!

Did you use the "-s" flag?

ln -s /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird

and just a side note, /usr/lib is a weird place to install programs. Try putting at /usr/local instead. I doubt it has anything to do with you problem, but /usr/lib are usually used for shared libraries, which /usr/local is usually used for shared applications.

Indeed, you can save and install whatever you please, it's just a hint

Good luck and Welcome to LQ.org!

Thanks for your help, the symbolic link works and I took your advice and moved the application.

Now I'm having a different problem. I created a Launcher for TBird and it launches but it launches as if I am just starting. It launches into the setup wizard for TBird but if I run the program from terminal it goes into the program with my account already setup. As far as I can tell it should be accessing the same executable but for some reason the launcher is doing something different.

Questions from a true

Thanks again for the previous info.

You're welcome. I'm glad it helped, at least a little bit

It's strange though, because in Linux, config files are usually stored into your home folder as a hidden file (wild guess, /home/gravity-1/.thuderbird). That's the file it should be reading from when thunderbird starts... So it does not have much to do with the executable itself, as far as I'm concerned.

Try deleting that hidden file and restart thunderbird to see if that helps.

Good luck!