314180 - Lock file cannot be set on vfat partition as it is a link

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 313360

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Paul David Johnson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051010 Firefox/1.0.7 (Ubuntu package 1.0.7)
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 1.0.6/1.0.7

I was installing a new Windows XP-Linux (SuSE 10.0) dual boot machine. In the past (Thunderbird 1.0.2 and earlier) - I have been able to share the profile on a vfat partition. 
This I am unable to do now (Thunderbird at least 1.06 and latter) as there is now a lock file in the Linux Thunderbird - called lock which is a symbolic link to 127.0.0.1:xxxx where xxxx is a ramdom higher port number. This link is found in the profile directory.
Unfortunately vfat does not all symbolic links - so we cannot share one profile and now have to use symbolic links on the link side to get things working - not as nice as the completely shared profile which 1.0 had.
In addition, the message that appears - Mozilla Thunderbird cannot use the profile "whatever" because it is in use - is the same one that appears if you try to open the same profile twice despite the absence of a lock file - bad error message.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Move/Copy/Create a profile to a vfat partition
2. Create a new profile and point to this new profile location
3. Run Thunderbird 
Actual Results:  
Error Dialog - Mozilla Thunderbird cannot use the profile "whatever" because it is in use

Expected Results:  
Run Mozilla Thunderbird

Comment 1

[Ben Turner (not reading bugmail, use the needinfo flag!)]

See bug 313360.

Comment 2

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 313360 ***