Debian Using icedove on network drive
Converting from Windows where I kept my Thunderbird mail folders on a shared network drive (I expect to access my email from whatever machine I happen to have up) to Linux I ran into some trouble getting icedove to run (thunderbird is already running ... message), and extensive searches of the web failed to provide a solution and in some cases provided misdirection. I thought perhaps I would discuss the cause and solution clearly in hopes that others that encounter this (and from what I saw in searches it's not uncommon) to get around it.
First of all the network drive has to be mounted as cifs, and secondly it appears (based on what I discovered in tracing it) that the file should be mounted with the unix file extensions, as the code does a symlink to the user's profile folder that fails if the option for no unix extensions is specified, I don't know if that affects the operation of the program.
Once you've updated /home/<username>/.mozilla-thunderbird/profiles.ini to point at your network folder icedove will start ONCE and appear to work correctly, from that point on it will issue the 'thunderbird is already running' message. The problem is that it is leaving a .parentlock file in your profile folder when it exits (hint: Check "show hidden files" if you navigate there through folders) that it expects to recreate each time it starts, if it already exists it thinks another instance is running. The workaround is to create a script that checks for .parentlock and exits with "another instance is running" if found, invokes icedove, and removes .parentlock when icedove exits.
...in hopes of saving some others from spending the time I did getting this to work, and hopefully not posted in the wrong branch.
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