Thunderbird won't start

[Guest Jelfish]

I'm sort of new to Linux but decided to switch to get away from spyware and the like. I wanted to get Thunderbird because I was using it on Windows and wanted to keep all of my emails from my inbox. I have the profile folder from the Windows Thunderbird and am sure that I have all of my email.

 

Here's what I did on Mandriva:

I downloaded Thunderbird from the Mozilla website to my desktop.

I opened a terminal and did the 'tar xvzf thunderbird.etc.etc' thing.

I went into the new Thunderbird folder on my desktop and click the file named 'thunderbird'.

I see a button for Thunderbird open in my task bar. A few seconds later, that button disappears and that's all. No error message and no windows pop up.

 

I have a feeling I installed it incorrectly or in the wrong location. In what folder are such program folders usually placed?

 

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help.

[arctic]

hello and welcome aboard :)

 

try the following: open a terminal (e.g. konsole) and launch thunderbird from there (you might need to cd to your thunderbird directory (→ cd /directory/where/thunderbird/is). the terminal will show might show you an error message. post the contents of the error massage in here.

 

edit: just an idea: set up your software mirrors via the easy-urpmi tool (link is at top of this page) and install thunderbird either via the terminal, using the urpmi-command or the mandrake-control-center. that might be the easiest way. ;)

Edited May 27, 2005 by arctic

[scarecrow]

Most likely is libstdc- something missing... Just fire it from console, as suggested above, and record the error messages.

[Guest Jelfish]

When I try to run it from Konsole, it gives me 'bash: thunderbird: command not found'. Actually, I can't even tab complete it. When I ls the folder, it's in green and with a star. Is there a command I need to use to run that file?

 

I'm going to try the urpmi thing now.

 

Thanks for the responses!

Edited May 27, 2005 by Jelfish

[falolaf]

try to type:

./thunderbird

in the folder.

[Guest Jelfish]

Ah that did something. Here's the error message:

 

./thunderbird-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannotopen shared object file: No such file or directory

 

Perhaps this is what scarecrow was talking about.

[falolaf]

Thats right. You need libstdc++.so.5 and you can find it in contrib.

Go to:

http://www.mandrivausers.org/easyurpmi/

and follow instructions to add contrib (and others)

 

then:

urpmi libstdc++5

in a konsole as root

[Guest Jelfish]

Thanks!

[Guest Jelfish]

Ok - new error message:

 

*** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0x08edf690 ***

./run-mozilla.sh: line 159: 15410 Aborted "$prog" ${1+"$@"}

 

Look familiar at all?

[Guest Jelfish]

Ok - I installed it with the urpmi command and it works now. I'm still a bit curious about what happened with the downloaded package, but I guess it's not that important now.

 

Thanks again everyone.

[adamw]

That's interesting; someone trying to run Mozilla's Sunbird package reports a very similar error. I seem to recall there was a small problem with glibc in 2005 that one of the devs posted a workaround for on the Cooker list, will have to check my archives...