firefox does not start

[Ray Parrish]

Lucio M Nicolosi wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Newly installed system, 8.10 64-bit on Core 2 duo box.
>> Busy adding software, doing updates, etc.
>>
>> Firefox worked for a while, then got to a state where
>> if I try to start it, it always says another firefox is
>> running and I must kill that or restart the computer.
>>
>> I've tried restatrting and done "ps ax | grep fire",
>> "ps ax | grep moz" and "ps ax | more" looking
>> for processes to kill. No joy.
>>
>> Presmably there's a lock file somewhere that
>> causes this, but I find nothing under /var/lock
>> or var/run.
>>
>> --
>> Sandy Harris,
>> Quanzhou, Fujian, China
>>
>> --
>> ubuntu-users mailing list
>> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
>> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>>
>>     
>
> Perhaps you could try the graphical alternative:
>
> System - Administration - System Monitor - Processes
>
> Look for Firefox and kill it.
>   
Hello,

I usually use "ps -C firefox" to discover the PID of a zombie, but it 
may not be in memory at all. I recently had the same problem, and the 
fix for me turned out to be renaming the Firefox profile folder, so that 
Firefox had to begin a new one on startup. Something in the old profile 
was telling Firefox it had already started, so it kept balking on me 
until I renamed the profile folder, and began a new profile.

I still haven't discovered what it was in the old profile folder that 
was causing the problem, but I still have it, so maybe some day I'll be 
able to find out what it was exactly. Jere's the location of the Firefox 
profile folder.

/home/username/.mozilla/firefox/sl4dj5fs.default

Yours of course will have your actual user name in place of the 
"username" that appears in that path string. Rename the last folder on 
the path, by changing the .default extension to .backup and you should 
then be able to start Firefox again.

Later, Ray Parrish

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