for some reason when I run Mozilla, it never seems to start.

Any ideas?

Can you give more information then what you have provided? Have you tried running mozilla from a shell? If so, do you get any errors? How exactly are you trying to run Mozilla? Have you upgraded mozilla? More info please...

I tried running mozilla from shell and gnome desktop. On the desktop, I see the black lines expand, but the program never appears. It was working fine until yesterday.

I get the same problem sometimes. What always works for me is this:

* cp ~/.mozilla ~/mozilla.backup
* rm -rf ~/.mozilla

* run mozilla; it should work now, but it will re-write a new ~/.mozilla configuration directory

* copy whatever you need from ~/mozilla.backup to ~/.mozilla/default/*.slt (e.g. your previous bookmarks.html)

spurious has the right idea.

mv is faster than cp then rm, and a little safer.
like mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.dontwork

my mozilla goes to start and tells me to select a profile when i try to go to the old profile i set up (last time this happened) it says that one is in use. I just booted so i dont see how. I dont want to lose all my bookmarks and shit again. Is there anything i can do to release the other profile?

you don't have to lose your bookmarks.
if you move the directory, you have old stuff, and
you can copy the bookmarks and a few files back.

when you setup mozilla, it creates a random directory
name for the user, so that malicious websites cannot
just pull files from there. they would have to know the
name of the directory.

i've had the same trouble recently. i upgraded mozilla
and the old setup's didn't work. but backup your old
.mozilla dir so you can try different stuff.

I used the mv line mentioned above. the next time i started mozilla from the commandline it asked me about the profile, then started. but if i click on the mozilla icon in gnome, it says 'starting mozilla,' but then never actually starts. i'm using mozilla 1.4. any other ideas?

you probably just got a typo or something.
if the .mozilla directory in your home directory gets
moved to a different name or deleted, then you will
not get asked about a profile. mozilla thinks you are
starting it for the first time. then you can put in your
settings.
and then copy your old mail files and bookmarks and
history or whatever you want over the new one.
don't do it will mozilla running though.
if the gnome icon and typing mozilla do different things,
they are probably not pointing to the right file.

if you are inexperienced, find your bookmarks.html
file first and whatever else you want to save, and
copy them to somewhere you think safe, and that
you can remember. then do it.

that was it, the gnome icon was pointing to mozilla 1.3.1 which came installed and i was using 1.4 which i installed. thanks!