Ubuntu 13.04 Thunderbird won't start

[wt.pm]

Restarted my computer, and noticed that Thunderbird which is set to auto-start did not start. So I clicked on the icon on the taskbar, the box highlighted the icon, the cursor spun around for a minute and then just quit. I tried clicking the icon on my Cairo dock, and going into the start programs folder and clicking there, same thing. I tried to start it with a terminal command and got this error

(process:3354): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion `sys_page_size == 0' failed

I tried reinstalling with Synaptic, still no luck. I don't want to uninstall and lose all my settings unless I just have to. So does anyone have any other ideas, before I uninstall?

[tanstaafl]

If you uninstall Thunderbird it does not delete your profile, which has your mail, settings, address books etc. They are deliberately stored in a different directory tree than the program. You could backup your profile first if you're worried. "Help -> troubleshooting information -> show folder" will launch your file manager, listing the profile directory, if you don't know where it is.

If you re-install Thunderbird it should automatically find and reuse the profile. The one caveat is that Ubuntu distro builds of Thunderbird modify Thunderbird to use the profile in a different location. So if you change to a Mozilla build of Thunderbird it won't find the profile. Use http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird to tell Thunderbird where the profile is.

Before you do any of this I suggest you read http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use to see if the problem is that Thunderbird tried to start and exited due to a lock file leftover in the profile. The lock file is called "lock" and/or ".parentlock" under Linux. Usually that occurs if Thunderbird didn't exit correctly or your PC crashed.

[wt.pm]

Before you do any of this I suggest you read http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use to see if the problem is that Thunderbird tried to start and exited due to a lock file leftover in the profile. The lock file is called "lock" and/or ".parentlock" under Linux. Usually that occurs if Thunderbird didn't exit correctly or your PC crashed.

I read the page you suggested, then I opened task manager and ended the process, then went in and deleted the "lock", and "parentlock" files, still would not start. Had to go back to task manager and end process again, and then delete the lock file.
Then I tried to open the -profile manager, got an error that there is no such file.
I uninstalled, restarted and reinstalled. Tried to start TB, cursor spun around a minute then a page flashed on the screen, disappeared, then nothing. Tried to open -profilemanager and got the following error

(process:3637): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion `sys_page_size == 0' failed

But, then while I was looking at the terminal, I got new mail messages pop ups. So apparently it's running somewhere I just can't open the window.

Thank you for the help.


EDIT: After a couple of unrelated restarts TB started working again. Don't know why. Thanks for the help

[tanstaafl]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833117
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=672671

I found two related bug reports where both Firefox and Thunderbird might occasionally have that problem if you use glib 2.36 or later, due to how they make calls to allocate memory. Its a regression bug. One person suggests as a workaround setting G_SLICE=always-malloc using a environment variable. See https://developer.gnome.org/glib/unstab ... nning.html