Firefox and Thunderbird

[Peter Silcock <smallcreep@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Just recently I started using Thunderbird again in preference to the 
mail client I had been using for some months (Evolution). Unfortunately, 
if I start Thunderbird first, Firefox bombs out with the message "The 
file /content/navigator.xul cannot be found. Please check the location 
and start again". If Firefox is already running, I can create new 
instances from the active window but not from the command line (or menu).

Sometimes the problem clears if I terminate Thunderbird then start 
Firefox, but after a couple of goes the error message appears all the 
time. Incidentally the same problem affects Mozilla.

I have seen this problem mentioned before (on a Red Hat bulletin board) 
and a similar problem affecting different modules has been reported 
elsewhere in MozillaZine. The tenor of the responses is "known bug" and 
then silence.

One workaround (OK so far!) for RPM installs is to run Thunderbird using 
the script in /usr/bin, but use /usr/lib/firefox/firefox to start the 
browser.  Presumably hand-crafted installs in /usr/local or wherever do 
not experience this difficulty.

(Running Firefox 0.8, Thunderbird 0.6 on Fedora Core 1).

Peter Silcock