Invisible Thunderbird process

vikyath · 02-27-2007, 11:54 PM

Hi,

I am not able to thunderbird application. whenever i try to it says "Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window you should close the existing thunderbird process, or restart your system.

I have restarted the system, but still the same issue.

Kindly help.

Vikyath

akudewan · 02-28-2007, 12:06 AM

Open up a console and type

Code:

ps -A | grep thunderbird

That will show you if any thunderbirds are running in the background.

vikyath · 02-28-2007, 12:20 AM

I did that and found 1 process. I killed that and restarted the application, but still the same error message.

wildar · 02-28-2007, 12:26 AM

Often, when this happens after application crashed and did not remove the lock files. Check your ~/.thunderbird/<profile name>/ or maybe ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile name>. Look for lock and/or .parentlock and delete them. Once they deleted, you should be able to start Thunderbird.
Note, this behavior can also apply to Mozilla suite of apps to include Firefox.

Hope this helps.

vikyath · 02-28-2007, 12:38 AM

I did check for lock files. However i agree to whatever you have said and i did a cross check to make sure that there are no lock/parentlock files existing.

wildar · 02-28-2007, 12:42 AM

Not sure if you noticed, '.parentlock' is a hidden file. The period before parentlock was not a typo.

vikyath · 02-28-2007, 05:21 AM

I did notice that.

akudewan · 02-28-2007, 05:46 AM

Hi,

There are a few more things you can try...

1) Try doing ps -A again and see if thunderbird is still around. If so, use the "kill -9" command to kill it. (The -9 signal will make sure its gone for good).

2) Rename your .thunderbird directory, and see what happens. If it works, then its probably some .lock file that you missed, or maybe a setting that got messed up.

3) Does thunderbird listen on a port? I don't think it should, but in case it does, maybe there's some other program listening on the same port...

vikyath · 02-28-2007, 06:04 AM

Thanks akudewan, The point 2 helped..i should have given that a shot earlier. Guess the settings might have got messed up.

Thanks a ton guys.