firefox & thunderbird

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Level 1

0 points

firefox & thunderbird

Greetings all,

I have bought a brand new mac 24".
This my first discovery of the "apple" computer system.
So far, I used an ordinary pc.
Today I intended to install firefox & thunderbird on the mac. Everything went ok until I reached to the point where I could no longer open any of them, getting the message "a copy of thunderbird (or firefox) is already open", which is something I don't understand since I cannot see where it is open. The problems occurred well after I succeeded in importing data from both thunderbird & firefox I use on my PC.
I actually don't know yet how to use properly a mac. I even tried to remove and re-install the two softwares (by the way, how do you remove a program on a mac?) but I still get the same message as before.
Can anyone explain me what's going wrong ?
Thanx !!!

imac 24", Mac OS X (10.0.x)

Posted on Jun 1, 2009 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

zeetog

Level 2

175 points

Jun 1, 2009 11:42 AM in response to CelineVN

Hello there, can you look in your 'applications' and see if there is a copy of firefox in the list. If there is you can click it and open it.

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Answer 2

CelineVN Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 1, 2009 12:28 PM in response to zeetog

hi !
I have already checked as you suggested but both firefox and thunderbird are not in the application area.
I have browsed on the web a short time after posting on this forum and found out that the problem seems to originate from a "bug" in the two mozilla programs. In some related topics about this it, is referred to a file ".parentlock" that would abort the complete closing process for whatever reasons. It seems to happen also on windows, so this means that the problem has not much to see with Mac OS. I think I will eventually forget about these two applications and use safari and mail. My only purpose now is to find a way to migrate all my emails from thunderbird on my PC to mail on Mac. Another big adventure as it seems ...
Thanks for your reply !

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Answer 3

Jun 1, 2009 1:41 PM in response to CelineVN

Today I intended to install firefox & thunderbird on the mac. Everything went ok until I reached to the point where I could no longer open any of them, getting the message "a copy of thunderbird (or firefox) is already open", which is something I don't understand since I cannot see where it is open. The problems occurred well after I succeeded in importing data from both thunderbird & firefox I use on my PC.

That issue happens on PCs too when FFox or TBird cannot find the user profile data folder.
I'm assuming you had Win XP on the PC and the default folder for both TB and FF were used.
To migrate data from PC to Mac simply copy these two folder

Tbird
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\xyz.default

FFox
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.default

onto a USB stick USB disk or whatever.

User is your account user name
xyz is a random string

On the Mac side, create a folder named Mozilla inside your user Documents folder.
Inside Mozilla create two folder one for FFox and one for TBird
Name the first Firefox 😉 and the second Thunderbird 😉
Copy JUST THE CONTENT of xyz.default FF into Documents/Mozilla/Firefox
The same for TB into Documents/Mozilla/Thunderbird

Open Terminal and type for Firefox
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p

and for Thunderbird
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -p

Those commands bring up the profile choser window.
You probably have a default profile. Remove it then select Create then continue and browse to the folder Documents/Mozilla/Firefox for FFox and Documents/Mozilla/Thunderbird for TBird

Execute Firefox and Thunderbird. You should see your e-mail and favourite and everything else you had on PC.

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Answer 4

rccharles

Level 6

13,037 points

Jun 1, 2009 3:25 PM in response to CelineVN

Here is how to get into terminal:
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

You should copy firefox and thunderbird into you applications folder. Just drag the application into the applications folder.

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Answer 5

CelineVN Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 2, 2009 1:03 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Thank you so much Alberto !!!
I did as you suggested and so far it works again.
I can open the programs again and have even succeeded in migrating data from the pc to the imac without any trouble.
I just hope that there will be no other bug in the long run.

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Answer 6

Jun 3, 2009 5:07 AM in response to CelineVN

Moving Mozilla's data from one platform to another is that easy, because everything you need is self-contained inside those folders.
Obviously, you must use the appropriate program for the right operating system 😉
I never tried with Linux but I suspect it's the same.

I love to know where my data are and I love to place them wherever I want. That's why I suggest the

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -p

I moved my TB data from PC to Mac over a year ago and I never had a single problem.

Anyway TB and FF are good programs althought not so well integrated with Mac OS X environment.

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