Firefox/Thunderbird not launching bug

[Nils Kassube]

agents4jesus at gmail.com wrote:
> This isn't the place to report bugs, but I thought I'd let anyone know
> who might be having this problem how to "fix" it.
> Out of the blue, Firefox and Thunderbird decided to not launch. It was
> weird, because I hadn't really made any system changes recently.

> I figured it out: Firefox/Thunderbird were trying to access ~/.gnome2
> For some reason, its owner was root and nothing else had access
> (neither read nor write).
> I then ransudo nautilus and made sure that "Others" were allowed to
> access the folder.
> Now Firefox/Thunderbird are working.
> 
> Was this not the best way to fix the problem? Any ideas why F and T
> weren't working or why that the folder was locked?

It would be better to make the user the owner of the directory, not make 
it accessible for the world. I would suggest to run the command

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME

in a terminal. That would make $USER the owner of all files in $HOME and 
not only fix this particular issue.

You probably have used sudo recently to run a graphical application, 
such as the command "sudo nautilus" which you mentioned. Then it happens 
sometimes that root becomes the owner of files in your $HOME folder. You 
should better use gksudo to run graphical applications as root. Use sudo 
only for cli applications.


Nils