Absolutely right, thank you for your patience.

"2) edit the Exec= line in the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.navicore.services to be Exec=/home/user/navistart"

No problem with editing the file, just a big problem saving it. Pemission denied. I can't see an easy way in emelFM2 to change pemission to 'user'. I have tried to use Xterminal, become root, and then change pemission for the file.

The chown command is long and produces errors so I have cd'd step by step and am stuck at "can't cd to /dbus-1".

This is all quite difficult for me. In the end it might be quicker and easier for me to swap over the screen. I just don't have the Linux skills.

Thank you for your help here, what you have done is very clever and I am sorry to be letting the side down.

Ah, I'm sorry, I do my editing as root using joe (a console application) as the editor.
Anyway that's just to fix the menu item, you can test that everything is working by manually executing /home/user/navistart in a console (x-terminal).
Once you confirmed that it works, open a console, become root, and type the following commands exactly as you see them here
cd will put you in the correct directory, mv will rename the file to have a backup and finally the cat will create a new file with everything you write until the EOF (note that the prompt will change to >).

Thank you for all of that. I have spent too much time in the past on MS-DOS but am completely lost when it comes to Linux. I use EasyRoot to become root.

Thanks to your help I now have the instructions in your README.txt fully implemented.

The problem is that Navicore will not run on the new N800, it shows ‘Maps Loading’ and then drops out.

I have reinstalled Navicore on the new N800 just so as to be certain that it does work albeit unactivated. Then repeated your README.txt instructions.

So I have two N800’s each with identical contents of the activated /home/user/.navicore/ldb

I have two SD cards each with identical contents of the activated /media/mmc1/maps/navicore/ldb

The old activated N800 runs Navicore irrespective of which SD card is in the slot but the new N800 doesn’t get past ‘Maps Loading’ with either SD card in the slot.

I have double checked and checked again that the files mac and /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.navicore.service are correctly configured, no typos etc. I have tried mac with upper and lower case letters. I have both the WLAN MAC and the Bluetooth.

All of the zipped contents of navicore.zip are in the /home/user directory. A note here, I do not have a Zip app on the N800 so I unzipped the file on my Win7 compute and then copied all of the contents into the /home/user directory.

Although I had a few flustered moments initially, I am confident now that I have followed the instructions correctly and accurately.

It seems that the new N800 is not finding all that it is looking for. Would you have any thoughts I wonder?

Well, I downloaded the file to check that it wasn't corrupted while uploading, and the two so files as well as the navistart script (the important bits) are the same I'm using on my tablet.
I suspected that the so files are missing the execute permission, but I tried here and navicore still works even without the x permission on those file, so it must be something else.

Oops, my bad, there's a typo in the README file, that has to be /media/mmc1/map/navicore/ldb (i.e map, not maps).

Sorry if that's the cause of the problem.

Edit: even without the ldb directory it should start albeit with no routing capabilities.
Are you using map version 2.2.8.604? (look in the application manager or in the about menu)
I'm not sure my hack works with previous versions.

Try opening a console (utilities->x-terminal) and type

/home/user/navistart

Edit: if it says "Permission denied" try the command

chmod +x /home/user/navistart

and try again

This aforesaid fix only works for prior owners, not for all, right? Just curious... reason I ask though, my N810 had to be sent in for repairs and I never got more than a day's chance to even try it. Now... well, we know I'll never get that chance to really try it.

Right. Or if someone wants to share his mac address and contents of the ldb directory.....

No, that was ok. On the typo error situation you might like to know of another one:-
2) edit the Exec= line in the file
/usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.navicore.services
should be /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.navicore.service
i.e. no ‘s’ at the end of ‘com.nokia.navicore.service’

Is there a certain glitchieness in XTeminal do you think? It behaves erratically on both tablets.

Anyway, after much retyping and retrying, finally navistart took the command and launched Navicore, fully activated and functional. It now launches from the Applications Menu by tapping on Map.

It looks like all it needed was a kick-start - which you achieved by the command line in terminal.

Thank you for your help and patience and, of course, enhancing my criminally neglected Linux knowledge.

@gerbrick
Do you have a N800 that you want to use?

That's really, really, strange, however all's well that ends well