SUSE 10.0 problems

[WebDrake]

Hello all,

I've just installed SUSE 10.0 on my laptop in dual boot with XP. Previously I had Ubuntu 5.10 installed...

In general it seems very nice but I have a couple of problems---one irritating, the other a bit more serious.

The serious one is to do with setting up Thunderbird. I managed to install it via YaST as per this site's instructions:

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

Now, with Ubuntu I had set up my Thunderbird profile on a FAT32 partition so as to share it with Windows XP, and this was working rather nicely. However, if I point this new Thunderbird install under SUSE to this directory, it creates an error, telling me the profile is "already in use".

This seems to be nothing to do with the actual profile and everything to do with the FAT32 partition: if I try to set up a new profile in a blank folder on the same partition, the same error results, but if I allow the profile to be created in my home folder, things work fine.

Any suggestions on how to fix this? I also tried installing Thunderbird directly from the .tar.gz downloadable from Mozilla.com, but this does not run properly either: I can start the profile manager (thunderbird -profilemanager) but Thunderbird proper does not run at all; typing "./thunderbird" seems to start something which closes immediately without even any error message.

... I'm not that experienced with Linux, and this has me baffled. Any ideas?

Many thanks,

-- Joe

 

[stefanwagner]

Perhaps your fat-partition is mounted by root or with restricted permissions, so thunderbird might not read/ write from/ to the folder.

Try to write and read as the same user from the commandline, or study your /etc/fstab.

seeking a job as java-programmer in Berlin:

http://home.arcor.de/hirnstrom/bewerbung

 

[WebDrake]

The fstab file is set to allow user read-write access, so it's not that.

I solved the problem, eventually, as follows:

(a) set up TB with an ordinary profile in the home directory.

(b) delete all its contents *except* the hidden file .parentlock

(c) go to the directory, and type,

ln -s /dir/where/shared/profile/is/* .

Then it works. I'm guessing the .parentlock file had something to do with it, and didn't work on the FAT32 fs.