Thunderbird ha s a stale Lock file, How to delete ?
 

after juggling hardware between 2 pc's, i was lazy and diddnt screw down my sound card.
after booting, i pluged the speaker to the sound card with too much force, sound card became partially un-plugged.

i slotted it back in, (wasnt sure if it came out all the way) which caused a crash.

at the time of the crash my mail client (thunderbird) was running.

now whenever i try to start thunderbird, i get the profile box poppin up saying my default profile is in use. 'top' shown that thunderbird is not running.

and fsck shows my file system (ext3) is fine.

this must be the work of a lock file ?

i know nothing about lock files, only that applications use them to lock down a resource.
because of the crash, it seems the lock file was not deleted.

where would a lock file be saved ?
how do i find the one created by thunderbird ( will it be names thunderbirds lock file or somthing similar)
and i assume it is safe to delete this ?

i have done as strace, but it doesnt apear to reveal the lockfile.

In your home folder there is a hidden folder called .thunderbird , the lock file is inside ~/.thunderbird/default/$RANDOM_NUMBER.slt/lock
It is safe to delete it but as always, if you want to play it safe, rename it.

thanks, it was the random number folder than confused me.
alls working now.