Fedora Users — Firefox and Thunderbird

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