[dapper] Firefox and Thunderbird issue (They wouldn't start!)

[Darryl Clarke]

After a power outage today, firefox and thunderbird are both refusing
to load.  They both claim with the same type of message

"Firefox is already running, but is not responding.  To open a new
window, you must first close the existing Firefox process or restart
your system."

"Mozilla-Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding.  To
open a new window, you must first close the existing
Mozilla-Thunderbird process, or restart your system."

Now, the option "restart" isn't one, because my system was restarted
after the power failure.

ps aux for mozilla-thunderbird/firefox yeilds nothing running.


I thought maybe this was just a classic case of my profile being
'locked' but then I realized when that happens these applications will
bring up the profile manager and throw a completely different message.

Just in case, i removed the 'lock' from the profiles of each.  The
same error occured.

As it turns out, there's a different lockfile in the profile directory
called '.parentlock' removing these let me load these programs again.

My question is, why isn't there something in place to clear out these
locks when there's obviously no firefox or tbird process running?

Those errors should trigger something a little more to check and see
what the heck is going on and clean out stale locks.

Average users won't know to remove a 'lock' and '.parentlock' files
from their profile directory to get it working again after an improper
shutdown of their PC.

Now it's time to order a new UPS, since mine is clearly disfunctional. :)

--
~ Darryl  ~ smartssa at gmail.com
~ http://darrylclarke.com