Hi,

There is even an other possibility (not using gconfig) to set the 
default browser for thunderbird:

Quit thunderbird and add the following line to your prefs.js of thunderbird:

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox");

You will find the file prefs.js in your .thunderbird folder for your 
profile (the .thunderbird folder is in your home directory):

# find ~/.thunderbird -name prefs.js. Normally something like 
~/.thunderbird/xxxyyyzzz.default/prefs.js.

This solution is taken from the PSI FAQ Linux page ;-)
http://ait.web.psi.ch/services/linux_new/faq/#Applications10

You can also add the above line to 
/usr/lib/thunderbird-1.0.8/defaults/profile/prefs.js to change it 
globally and the user can still overwrite the setting in his own 
prefs.js (not tested!).

Regards,

    Urs




Alan J. Flavell wrote:

>One of our users has complained that the local SL30x Thunderbird 
>installation was unable to open URLs.
>
>Excuse me if this is wrong, but it does not seem to have got an airing 
>on the SL users list, so I thought I'd raise it here.
>
>Our user pointed me to a posting on the Fermi Linux users list:
>
>http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0508&L=LINUX-USERS&P=R5027
>
>But this workaround takes away the user option, and enforces everyone 
>to use the same browser...
>
>However, google pointed me to an item at CERN:
>
>http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/news.shtml
>(search for the string "gconftool" to find the item).
>
>This proposes the gconftool-2 command for CLI setting the url-handler
>correctly.  (Or can be done via the GUI).
>
>I tried the proposed CLI command for myself, and it seemed to do the 
>trick.
>
>The CERN item seems to be a proper *user* workaround, but every user 
>would need to carry it out for themselves. I can't help thinking there 
>surely ought to be an effective solution in terms of CLI setting a 
>system default (leaving it open for the minority of users who wanted 
>to use a different browser, to set it for themselves in the way 
>that's described at CERN).
>
>I'm not familiar enough with GNOME and gconf, but I guess it would be 
>done somewhere in the /etc/gconf/* hierarchy?
>
>regards
>
>