On Dec 6, 2024, at 22:14, Stephen Morris <steve.morris...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What determines that the lock file is valid? In the case of Thunderbird where 
> it creates a lock file in folder for my profile and the folder where 
> Thunderbird is installed to, the symlinks are dangling while Thunderbird is 
> running, if firefox is the same while firefox is running the lock symlink is 
> dangling and after firefox shuts down it is left there dangling, hence what 
> determines whether or not it is valid?

I think you are being a bit too strict with this command. 

The way Firefox and thunderbird encode a hostname and PID in a symlink is a 
reeeally old way of doing it, it predates Firefox entirely. It’s how Firefox 
can tell if a running instance already exists, so it can tell it to open a link 
instead of starting a brand new session. (The “remote” functionality). If the 
hostname matches and the pid is active, use the pid. If the hostname matches 
and the pid is not Firefox or doesn’t exist, start a new session and delete the 
old one. If the hostname doesn’t match, complain to the user that Firefox is 
running on another host (for shared home across systems). Firefox is *supposed* 
to clean it up but perhaps you killed it uncleanly or by a shutdown. 

I think you are taking the “symlinks” command a bit too seriously. There’s 
nothing wrong with how Firefox uses a symlink like this. I’ve seen quite a few 
other apps use it that way. Don’t get bent out of shape about it, there’s 
nothing in the spec that says a symlink must point at a file. 

I suspect you should rethink using it on $HOME. It’s fine for detecting broken 
software or in a specific directory. 

-- 
Jonathan Billings

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