[SOLVED] Mint 17.1 Thunderbird Captured by Bing

julianvb · 12-27-2014, 01:18 PM

2014-12-27

Today as I was trying to fix Thunderbird's erratic junk-mail filter, Bing somehow made it impossible for me to use Thunderbird any more. Now I always see this stupid Bing webpage whenever I try to open Thunderbird by either clicking on Mint's Mail icon or issuing the 'thunderbird' command.

I've recently discovered that both Evolution and Thunderbird can be very disappointing in Mint. I don't remember Thunderbird ever destroying my e-mail folders left and right in Ubuntu 12.04 as in Linux Mint. I've never used Evolution in Ubuntu.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Julianvb

jdkaye · 12-27-2014, 02:48 PM

If you issue the thunderbird command from a terminal then you should get some information on that terminal if it's opening a web browser instead of thunderbird.Can you post the contents of your terminal when you give the thunderbird command. Also what is the "thunderbird command" that you issue. On my system thunderbird sits in my /opt folder and if I start it from a terminal I use the following command:

Code:

/opt/thunderbird64/thunderbird

jdk

julianvb · 12-27-2014, 09:13 PM

Hi, jdk,

Thanks very much. I'm attaching the error file captured with the terminal command 'thunderbird' and also the thunderbird-launching information.

Julianvb

(process:4509): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

syg00 · 12-27-2014, 09:53 PM

That launcher looks ok.

Quote:

Originally Posted by julianvb

Today as I was trying to fix Thunderbird's erratic junk-mail filter, Bing somehow made it impossible for me to use Thunderbird any more.

Well, seeing as you were "fixing", things, maybe we have a culprit. Only you know what you did - and why.

Quote:

I've recently discovered that both Evolution and Thunderbird can be very disappointing in Mint.

I've had my "better half" using T/bird on Mint for a couple of years - never had an issue I'm aware of. I moved (everyone) off Evolution years ago as it continually caused problems (couldn't find its own folders that still had all the mail in them) - and that was probably before we abandoned Ubuntu.

syg00 · 12-27-2014, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by julianvb

(process:4509): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

Anything in dmesg ?.

julianvb · 12-28-2014, 12:42 AM

syg00,

Thanks for enlightening me on Evolution.

I haven't seen anything related to Thunderbird via dmesg.

I've just removed and purged both Evolution and Thunderbird from Mint 17.1 and verified their
absence by means 'dpkg -l'. I also de-selected Thunderbird from Mint's Main Menu. I then re-installed Thunderbird after rebooting the system. It's amazing that Bing immediately re-appeared as soon as I had entered 'thunderbird' on the command line! This is what I call capturing.

Julianvb

astrogeek · 12-28-2014, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by julianvb

syg00,

Thanks for enlightening me on Evolution.

I haven't seen anything related to Thunderbird via dmesg.

I've just removed and purged both Evolution and Thunderbird from Mint 17.1 and verified their
absence by means 'dpkg -l'. I also de-selected Thunderbird from Mint's Main Menu. I then re-installed Thunderbird after rebooting the system. It's amazing that Bing immediately re-appeared as soon as I had entered 'thunderbird' on the command line! This is what I call capturing.

Julianvb

That probably just means that the old thunderbird configs are still in your home directory. They are probably also recoverable as your problem is almost certainly a config issue.

I would remove or rename the old config, start up thunderbird and see if you don't end up with a normal, fresh thunderbird install. If so, then you can figure out how you told it to open with the bing webpage and recover your previous setup.

To rename, with thunderbird closed...

Code:

mv ~/.thunderbird ~/.old-thunderbird

...then start thunderbird.

syg00 · 12-28-2014, 01:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by julianvb

(process:4509): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

This appears to be a "normal" error message when started from the terminal (on Mint). Can be ignored I think as I also got it and thunderbird still started.

Mint overloads a wrapper for thunderbird - what does this show ?

Code:

file $(which thunderbird)

jdkaye · 12-28-2014, 01:15 AM

I'm afraid your screenshot of the error message got cut in half. It's unreadable.

Quote:

(process:4509): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

This is not a problem. My Thunderbird works perfectly and here are the messages I get when I start it from a terminal:

Quote:

:~$ /opt/thunderbird64/thunderbird

(process:19280): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
[calBackendLoader] Using libical backend at /home/jdkaye/.thunderbird/rdpwy3ht.default/extensions/{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}/components/libical.manifest
enigmail.js: Registered components
TypeError: Components.classes['@mozilla.org/extensions/manager;1'] is undefinedmimeVerify.jsm: module initialized

As astrogeek says, it's probably a configuration error.
jdk

julianvb · 12-28-2014, 02:16 AM

Hi, Everyone,

Many thanks for coming to my rescue. Your diagnosis was absolutely correct. I solved the problem by renaming ~/.thunderbird as you suggested in order to remove any remaining corrupted configuration data.

The 'file (which thunderbird0' command produced the following output:
/usr/bin/thunderbird: Symbolic link to '../lib/thunderbird/thunderbird.sh'.

I've just revived Thunderbird and everything is working as before. Thanks a lot again.

Julianvb

astrogeek · 12-28-2014, 02:29 AM

Great! Glad that worked!

All of your old email and address book is probaboly still intact under ~/.old-thunderbird, so if that is important to you, you can still work on recovering it by playing "musical thunderbird" - rename the new ~/.thunderbird to maybe ~/.new-thunderbird and the old one back to ~/.thunderbird and try to figure it out. Otherwise, just delete the ~/.old-thunderbird to clean up the space.