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my Dad cant get thunderbird to start. This started after he got tired of the nag screens and updated ubuntu. He is now running ubuntu 20.04.1 and thunderbird 68.10.0

Whenever he types thunderbird at the terminal console it throws up a thunderbird crash reporter. Which says sqlite version error.

He has tried removing and reinstalling thunderbird. He has tried reinstalling sqlite3 using :-

sudo apt update 
sudo apt-cache search sqlite
sudo apt install sqlite3

It says sqlite3 is already the newest version 3.31.1-4ubuntu0.2

On the internet I found something about a wrong sqlite3.so file. He only has one. We tried renaming it, it made no difference,so we changed it back again. Though there are a lot of sqlite3.so.0 and sqlite3.so.0.8.6 in various directories. His libsqlite3.so is in /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.so and are the sqlite3.so.0 and sqlite3.so.0.8.6 pointed to by it.

The only other thing I can find on the internet about thunderbird and sqlite3 talks about using emerge , but apparently that is for gentoo linux not ubuntu.

Anyone got any ideas on how to fix this ? Preferably in simple steps :) Or even anyone else have the same problem ?

N0rbert
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MajorTom
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  • Is `thunderbird --allow-downgrade` working – nobody Nov 24 '20 at 13:21
  • Thanks for the suggestion, but thunderbird --allow-downgrade throws up the same thunderbird crash reporter and with the same message of a sqlite version error – MajorTom Nov 24 '20 at 13:28
  • You have to remove local library by `sudo rm /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.so`. And then reinstall package from repository by `sudo apt-get install --reinstall sqlite3` . – N0rbert Nov 24 '20 at 13:48
  • Thank you for the suggestion Norbert, we have now tried that. Unfortunately it still gives gives the same MOZ_Crash(SQLite version error) message. Also tried running thunderbird -safe-mode with the same result too. – MajorTom Nov 24 '20 at 14:06
  • Does TB start in a different user account? – heynnema Nov 24 '20 at 14:56
  • Ok, he has now tried a different user account, but guess what, still the same error :( – MajorTom Nov 24 '20 at 15:02
  • Maybe the crash id due to some config-files or extensions. Rename first the hidden folder .thunderbird into something else. Start thunderbird again. If thunderbird no longer crashes, then there are some incompatible files or extension in the former folder – Bernard Decock Nov 24 '20 at 17:09
  • So he just tried renaming .thunderbird folder, but unfortunately still the same crash. – MajorTom Nov 24 '20 at 18:50
  • Ok so he failed to get it working with 68.10 and so followed the instructions in another article about upgrading to thunderbird 78 , specifically the answer that starts "You can use this ppa" https://askubuntu.com/questions/1270573/cannot-upgrade-to-latest-version-of-thunderbird-78 . He now has a working email but has lost all his old email messages. He is/ was using pop3 which stores it on his machine. I dont know if this is because of him unistalling, reisntalling thunderbird, or just that thunderbird is incompatable with itself ! Hope someone finds this useful ! – MajorTom Nov 26 '20 at 10:34

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