I'm relatively new to Linux, and I'm sure there's an easy way to do this, but...

I've installed the WebMail extension so I can check my hotmail via Thunderbird (using the .xpi files) but there's a message saying that I will need permission to the application folder, and each successive restart of Thunderbird gives the same message when I go to WebMail options in the extension manager.

I thought if I logged in as root (sudo mozilla-thunderbird) I could get it to work properly (adding webmail as an option to the install wizard), but it only worked for the root account, and when I went back in as myself I still didn't have the WebMail option in the Create Account wizard.

How can I get Thunderbird access to the proper directories?

Thanks,
Ethan

you probably need to chmod that application directory to give other users read/execute access.
Not at a linux box right now, so I can't see.

Would that be the /etc/mozilla-thunderbird directory that I'd have to chmod? I'm still not sure on where what types of files are kept.

unfortunately I am not at a linux box right now. I would try looking for the extensions directory or anything that appears to be specific to the webmail plugin, and looking for anything that only root has permissions for.

The extensions should be installed in a folder in your home directory, /home/[name]/.mozilla-thunderbird/[what I think is random numbers].Defaultuser/extensions
That would be the first thing to check premissions for. .mozilla-thunderbird will probably be hidden by default, but you can check the permisions by using the terminal to change to that folder with
cd ~/.mozilla-thunderbird
use ls to see what the random numbers are
cd ./[random numbers]
and typing ls -la when in your home directory.

Along with info about all the other stuff in the folder I get
drwxr-xr-x [my name] [my name, this time referring to group name] extensions

This means that it's a directory with the owner having read, write and execute privilidges and everyone else having read and execute.

If you have that it might also be worthwhile to check the permissions of what's inside the extensions folder. Also if it's different it might be good to see if the whole .mozilla-thunderbird folder has the wrong permissions.

If it's the /home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird directory, then user 'rxw' access (the first set of three flags) is all I would need to have, right? It works when I run it as sudo, so I'm guessing there's another directory out there that's griefing me. I've tried just about everything, and even had to roll back to Thunderbird 1.0.6 to make the extension work. I've installed 1.0.6 in the /opt/thunderbird directory, and changed the /opt/thunderbird flags, as well as those for the extensions subdirectory to include o=rwx... But still no luck! It only works under root.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ethan

Just thought I'd post what finally ended up working, though I wish I could say which (if any) of the dozens of priveledges I changed made a difference. I upgraded to Thunderbird 1.5 beta and now the WebMail extension is working great.

Thanks for your ideas,
Ethan