Evolution not starting when using /home via NFS

Symptom

You have mounted your /home directory via NFS. You want to start evolution but get an error message about something wrong with a lock. You are using SuSE Linux 9.0 (or mayby 8.1 or 8.2).

Reason

Evolution uses gconf for storing the configuration and that wants to lock a file in ~/.gconf before starting evolution. But the nfs lock daemon is not running and gconf cannot get that lock via NFS. SuSE has not activated the start script /etc/init.d/nfslock per default:

# chkconfig nfslock
nfslock  off

Solution

Activate the service nfslock and start it:

# chkconfig --add nfslock
nfslock          0:off  1:off  2:off  3:on   4:off  5:on   6:off   
# rcnfslock start
Starting NFS file locking daemon                            done
Starting NFS stat daemon                                    done

Keywords: nfs nfslock evolution lock gconf gconfd suse90   Author: Mathias Kettner