Friday 25 February 2011

"Could not initialize the application's security component" seen when starting Lotus Notes 8.5.2 on Ubuntu Linux 10.10

Hmmm, for no obvious reason, I started seeing this message, in a screen-obscuring dialogue box, when starting Notes 8.5.2 on Ubuntu Linux 10.10

Could not initialize the application's security component. The most likely cause it problems with files in your application's profile directory.
Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and that your hard disk is not full or close to full.
It is recommended that you exit the application and fix the problem.
If you continue to use this session, you might see incorrect application behaviour when accessing security features

as per the screenshot below.



This bug report in Launchpad led me to the solution, suggesting that the problem may be due to a missing or, in my case, incorrectly permissioned, Eclipse subdirectory.

To test this assumption, I ran the following set of commands: -

ll /home/hayd/ | grep mozilla

returns

drwx------  6 hayd hayd      4096 2010-10-11 18:37 .mozilla/

ll /home/hayd/.mozilla/

returns: -

total 40
drwx------  6 hayd hayd  4096 2010-10-11 18:37 ./
drwxr-xr-x 93 hayd hayd 12288 2011-02-25 11:15 ../
drwx------  3 root root  4096 2011-01-30 18:51 eclipse/
drwx------  3 hayd hayd  4096 2010-06-14 13:42 extensions/
drwx------  4 hayd hayd  4096 2010-09-09 08:36 firefox/
-rw-------  1 hayd hayd  5218 2010-07-30 13:23 pluginreg.dat
drwxr-xr-x  2 hayd hayd  4096 2010-10-11 18:37 plugins/

ll /home/hayd/.mozilla/eclipse/

returns: -

total 272
drwx------ 3 root root   4096 2011-01-30 18:51 ./
drwx------ 6 hayd hayd   4096 2010-10-11 18:37 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 2010-08-28 19:13 Cache/
-rw------- 1 root root  65536 2011-01-30 18:51 cert8.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   2048 2010-11-25 10:42 cookies.sqlite
-rw------- 1 root root  16384 2011-01-30 18:51 key3.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   2048 2010-06-15 16:42 permissions.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 151552 2011-01-30 17:54 places.sqlite
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      0 2011-01-30 17:54 places.sqlite-journal
-rw------- 1 root root    310 2010-11-25 13:33 pluginreg.dat
-rw------- 1 root root    769 2011-01-30 18:51 prefs.js
-rw------- 1 root root  16384 2011-01-30 17:32 secmod.db

The solution ( for me ) ?

As root ( via sudo bash ), run: -

chown -R hayd:hayd /home/hayd/.mozilla/eclipse/
chmod -R +rwx /home/hayd/.mozilla/eclipse/

These two commands set the appropriate ownership and read/write/execute permissions to the eclipse subdirectory that Notes uses.

This appears to have resolved the problem - so far......

2 comments:

prahalad said...

Its because of the permissions issue. Delete the file cert.db in the .mozilla folder . Step by step instructions are explained here:
Could not initialize the application's security component

Dave Hay said...

@Prahalad, thanks for this

Visual Studio Code - Wow 🙀

Why did I not know that I can merely hit [cmd] [p]  to bring up a search box allowing me to search my project e.g. a repo cloned from GitHub...