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
On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 21:34 +0100, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
System.ArgumentNullException
Looking this up, it's a .NET Framework exception, which is unusual on a Linux box :) I suggest you use synaptic to locate anything that depends on mono-runtime which is currently installed as there should be very few such applications on a typical machine, then you should have found your culprit for this message at least.
Could not read Pidgin buddy list file:
Again - use synaptic to locate installed applications that depend on pidgin (there shouldn't be any since you purged pidgin) and libpurple0 (since that's what owns the ~/.purple folder and below). Either you will find broken dependancies or the offending application.
All this assumes you haven't just shoved random code onto your machine, ie: that everything you have installed used dpkg or a front-end such as synaptic, apt, aptitude.
Finally, you can monitor file access (a la Filemon) using the technique described here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2415252#post2415252
If you re-create the target file (/home/peter/.purple/blist.xml), then obtain it's inode (ls -i /home/peter/.purple/blist.xml), the block dump output should identify the application that is accessing said file.
HTH, Phil.
On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 21:34 +0100, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
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".
You don't by chance have Gnome-DO running do you ?
If you do (it will usually be activated with <Windows Key><space>) and may have a purple icon in the notification area of your desktop.
Disable any Gnome-DO plugins for stuff you don't have or don't use. The Thunderbird one doesn't appear to be present here but I do have the Pidgin one. Googling seems to suggest that the Thunderbird plugin can cause this error to appear.
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Peter Alcibiades -
Phil Ashby -
Wayne Stallwood