OK, this time I decided to have at it root and branch, so did locate to find every pidgin or beagle file there was. I had already removed pidgin using synaptic, but there were a few left over documentation files and some libraries. Then did rm on the lot of them.
It makes no difference! I am still getting the errors.
Are we at a point where the only thing that will work is a clean reinstall? Surely this cannot be? Is there any way to find out what it is that is looking for the pidgin files? As in
Cannot index Thunderbird contacts because a System.ArgumentNullException was thrown: Argument cannot be null. Parameter name: path Could not read Pidgin buddy list file: Could not find a part of the path "/home/peter/.purple/blist.xml".
Well, it is not surprising it cannot find part of the path, because I have deleted the whole folder. But what is it that is looking for it if there is neither pidgin nor beagle installed?
Thunderbird is equally mysterious. Maybe the thing to do is get rid of Iceweasel? Could it be that?
I have also gone through and eliminated beagle in the same way. Does not seem to make any difference.
Peter