Just how do you get Thunderbird 0.8 to run? I have run tar and tried to run thunderbird from terminal. Nothing happens! Clicking on the executable files doesn't do anything either. I'm running Suse 9.1.

Well, I've never used SuSe (I've always used Slackware) and I don't use Thunderbird (I've always used Evolution), but....

I saw your post and downloaded the file thunderbird-0.8-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz to see if I could get it to work.

From a terminal shell, I executed...

bash-3.00$ tar -xzvf thunderbird-0.8-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz

Then I had a "thunderbird" directory.

I changed into that directory using...

bash-3.00$ cd thunderbird

And then I ran thunderbird using...

bash-3.00$ thunderbird

It seemed to start up fine for me. I'm not sure if maybe you had a problem with the untar'ing (since it's actually a gzip file that needs to be unzipped first, but that's what the "z" option does in the tar command you see above).

At the very least try the above commands in a terminal shell and see if it works that way. If not then post back that it doesn't and I'm sure folks will be able to help you further.

Yep, works with SuSE 9.0. Just have to remember to sign off SU before using ./thunderbird.

Thanks, guys. Well, it's not working. Here's what I have in my /thunderbird subdirectory. All I get is "file not found."

Any ideas?


chrome libldap50.so libsmime3.so mozilla-xremote-client
components libmozjs.so libsoftokn3.chk README.txt
components.ini libnspr4.so libsoftokn3.so res
defaults libnss3.so libssl3.so run-mozilla.sh
extensions libnssckbi.so libxpcom_compat.so thunderbird
greprefs libplc4.so libxpcom.so thunderbird-bin
icons libplds4.so libxpistub.so xpicleanup
init.d libprldap50.so LICENSE.txt

You are probably using the old dos commands. When you CD'd into the directory, to run thunderbird, did you type it like this

./thunderbird

or like this

thunderbird

The top one is the correct way to launch an executable in your current directory

Well, you've definately got all the right components. If you're still having trouble, why not go the GUI way to check it out? Browse to thunderbird directory and click on the thunderbird shell script and make sure it's launching. Hell, as long as you're there, drag it to the desktop and create a link for future launchings.

Okay...I tried to launch using ./thunderbird and got this message.
What does it mean, and what do I need to do now?


Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: XDM authorization key matches an existing client!

(thunderbird-bin:26462): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

I also tried launching the shell script via gui and it did not work.

Okay,


I've seen the issues you are reporting (the xdm issues) when something is installed as one user and then tried to be run as another (at least in one instance I saw when googling).


So.....

when you did the untarring what user where you logged in as?

what user do you normally run X as? (please tell me it's not root)

you don't need to change to root when untarring the archive, in fact, doing so will muck permissions up IIRC.



What I did when I said what I did in the second post in this thread was:

downloaded the tar.gz archive (the thunderbird app)

I always log into X (startx) under my normal username (not root)

i just opened a console in X (for me i use gnome and i like xterm so i just use *Actions* *Run Application* then type xterm to get a console.

in my home directory /home/bob is where i issued the untarring command i mentioned

then just issued: cd thunderbird

and then just ./thunderbird

seems like you may be having permission issues.

again, please be sure you are not running X as root...that's bad..running anything as root is bad...it's like running windows...which is bad.

sorry my words are so convoluted, but i'm not sure exactly what you're doing (and as what user) and (again) I'm not a SuSE user so please forgive me if my advice is not appropriate for SuSE, just trying to offer what worked for me (using Slackware).

Thanks. No, I'm not logged on as root. But, just to double-check, I deleted all the files and directory, downloaded thunderbird again, etc., and got the same error message:

george@linux:/usr/local/bin/thunderbird> ./thunderbird
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: XDM authorization key matches an existing client!

(thunderbird-bin:27923): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

do NOT run thunderbird as root unless you have a really good reason.

I did a bit of Googling and found your problem/possible solution at http://www.netsys.com/suse-linux-e/2.../msg03384.html
Follow the thread - looks like you have to remove the authorizations with xhost + and then, once you've run it once, you can turn the authorizations back on with xhost - and it should run fine thereafter.

Bob -- thank you, sir! I followed the link and got it to work! Much thanks for your research. Frankly, I'm such a newb that I'm not exactly sure why it works...but it does!