How to Use Thunderbird 3 or 5 with UW CSE Mail Services

This document has three sections:

• A summary of the key settings you will want to configure.
• A step-by-step tutorial for configuring Thunderbird 2.0 to work with the UW CSE IMAP service, complete with screenshots.
• A Frequently Asked Questions section.

Key Settings

Local Mailbox

The settings in this table are for users with local mailboxes. Use your CSENetId (AKA "kerberos") credentials with this service.

Note: "you" means your CSE username.

Google Apps for Education

The settings in this table are for configuring Thunderbird to work with Google Apps for Education. (Google offers Configuring other mail clients at Google Help, which summarizes how to configure an email client to work with the "consumer" Gmail service. That information also works for configuring Thunderbird 3 to work with Google Apps for Education Gmail if you use you@cs.washington.edu as your account name and email address instead of user@gmail.com.)

NB: use your "Google-held" password with this service. That's probably not the same as your other passwords.

You can use either the CSE or the Google server for outgoing email. See the Incoming Server section of the table above for how to configure to use the CSE server. Here is how to configure to use the Google server:

Microsoft Outlook Live

The settings in this table are for configuring Thunderbird to work with Microsoft Outlook Live, the email component of the Microsoft Live@Edu service suite.

NB: use your "Windows Live" password with this service. That's probably not the same as your other passwords.

You can use either the CSE or the Microsoft server for outgoing email. See the Incoming Server section of the table at the top of this section for how to configure to use the CSE server. Here is how to configure to use the Microsoft server:

Tutorial

There are three flavors of UW CSE email: two cloud services and, for legacy users, a local mailbox. We focus on how we configure Thunderbird 3 to access the "UW CSE Google Apps for Education Gmail" flavor, which is the most common case. Consult the Key Settings section, above, for the other account flavours.

1. If necessary, install Thunderbird. General-purpose lab-supported Linux machines have Thunderbird pre-installed.

2. If you don't already have an email account configured in Thunderbird— as we assume here— the New Account wizard will appear. If you do have existing accounts configured, select "New/Mail Account..." to create an additional one.

The horrible truth is that the wizard isn't going to succeed here, but you can't get past it until you enter at least a fullname and email address and press the "Continue" button. So do that, then press the "Stop" button on the next dialog box, interupting Thundberbird from furiously trying to guess the correct parameters.

3. Once you press "Stop," you can fill in corect parameters, as shown in the image below. A key opportunity to fail here on cloud accounts is not to enter your full @cs.washington.edu email address as the username. For a local mailbox, though, you do just enter your CSE username. Other pitfalls: selecting POP instead of IMAP as the protocol. Also, you will need to override the server names, which Thunderbird will wrongly guess should be cs.washington.edu.

4. Next, press the "Re-test Configuration" button. If everything is good, you will get a pair of coveted green "go" icons and the "Create Account" button will become active. Press it.

5. Basic setup is now complete. Here's how Thunderbird 3 looks if you click on the account name in the lefthand page.

6. If you are an Exchange user, you are used to being able to type the names of local users into the To field of messages and having the fullname and email address autocomplete. That capability is based upon the standards-based directory service that Microsoft calls Active Directory, but our Unix-base email infrastructure has a service based upon the same standards. It's called "LDAP." We are now going to configure the mailer to use it. It's optional, but worthy. "Click on View settings for this account" to pull up the "Account Settings" dialog.

7. Click on "Composition and Addressing," then click the "Use a different LDAP server" radio button to activate the "Edit Directories" button.

8. After clicking the "Edit Directories" here and then the "Add" button on the Edit Directories dialog, the "Directory Server Properties" dialog enters from stage left. Hold your applause— this is intensely arcane.

Fill in the form with the following values:

Actually, the "Name" can be anything you like, but there is no room for creativity in the "Hostname" and "Base DN" fields. You can ignore the rest of the fields.

Note: if you are configuring a mailer on a non-.cs.washington.edu host, you must check the "use a secure connection (SSL)" box and the "bind DN" field needs to be set to the same value as the "base DN" except:

1. start with an extra "uid" parameter with your username as the value
2. use "Account" for the value of the first "ou" field (instead of "People")

For me, then, the value of "bind DN" would be uid=rose,ou=Account,ou=Computer Science & Engineering,o=University of Washington,c=US.

After entering those changes, make sure "UW CSE" is the selected directory server.

Press "OK."

9. We are in the home stretch. Let's check our mail by pressing the "Get Mail" button near the top lefthand side of the main mail client window. We are starting a conversation with your IMAP server.

The encryption we are using for incoming mail, outgoing mail, and LDAP is based upon the use of an "SSL server certificate," a chunk of data that Thunderbird expects to be digitally signed by a "certificate authority." Getting them commercially signed costs money, and we've got a lot of them, so the University signs them for us. Standard builds of Thunderbird haven't been configured to recognize the University's certificate authority as a valid one, so the first time you go to check your mail, a warning window may appear. If so, click on "Accept this certificate permanently" and then click "Okay"; if not, you are using the UW CSE build of Thunderbird, which has been preconfigured to recognize the UW Computing and Communications CA.

If you are configuring a non-CSE build of Thunderbird, you can avoid the warning dialog and the need to blindly accept the indentity of the service by following the instructions in Adding a Certificate Authority to Thunderbird.

10. You may choose to check the "Use Password Manager to remember this password" box, in which case you will not need to enter your password each time you check your email or send outgoing email. If you do, you should establish a "master password." Such a master password is requested by Thunderbird the first time in each session that it is asked to provide your password to a service (and every now and again for other security-related operations). The master password is used to encrypt the password store on disk; without it, your passwords could conceivably be stolen by a malevolent user that gained access to your machine.

To establish a master password, select "Options" from the "Tools" menu, then select "Security" and click on the "Passwords" tab. Check the "Use a master password to encrypt stored passwords" box, then click the "Set Master Password" button to establish a master password.

11. Now, let's send a message by clicking on the "Compose" button near the top lefthand side of the main email client window. I've found that Thunderbird 3 may have forgotten that my username for the purposes of sending mail is rose@cs.washington.edu, not simply rose. And that will cause mail-sending to break. To fix that:

1. Open the "Account Settings" dialog (see step 6 above).
2. Click on "Outgoing Server (SMTP)."
3. Select the Gmail server for the CSE service.
4. Click the "Edit" button.
5. Edit the "username" field.
6. Click "OK," "OK" to save the edit.

We're done!

Note: all of this was performed using Thunderbird 3.1.4 on Windows 7 Professional, but there are very few differences between platforms, and not that many differences between recent versions of Thunderbird 3. I did it all on 30 September 2010.

Frequently Asked Questions

• General Questions
• Message Composition
• Converting from Other Clients
• Contacting the Author

I have a local mailstore. Where is my mail stored?

In short, in the /mailspool/folders/<username>/ directory on the host serving your Unix home directory.

Thunderbird also creates Local Folders— mail that you drag into Local Folders is local to the machine where the client is running, while the mail in your <username>@cs.washington.edu folders are available on any computer and any IMAP email client that you configure to access it. That's the beauty of IMAP: you can access the same repository of email from multiple locations and with multiple clients.

What does it mean to "subscribe" to a folder?

The IMAP server keeps track of which files and directories are used to store mail. Those are your "subscribed" folders.

The list of subscribed folders is known to the server, and the client queries for it at startup. That means that you can use one client to create or delete a folder, and other clients will learn about it without the user having to take explicit action. For example, you might create a folder from your work machine, then later use your home machine to check your email. The new folder will be known to the home machine. With local CSE IMAP servers, the folder list is implemented using a file called ~/.mailboxlist. Don't delete that file!

Thunderbird provides a means to subscribe to a folder. That's useful for cases where you have a file in Unix mailbox format that you created outside the IMAP service— for example, if you had email from another service that you were migrating to CSE IMAP. In this case, you can use Thunderbird to browse the file system and identify those email folders that contain email you wish to subscribe to. Thunderbird tells the IMAP service about those folders, which are then available to any IMAP client you use with your email.

What other servers can I use for outgoing email (SMTP)?

Some people prefer to use the UW SMTP service at smtp.washington.edu (instead of <username>.mail.cs.washington.edu or a cloud server). See How do I configure for my u.washington.edu for details.

How do I add another email account?

You can use an arbitrary number of email and newsgroup accounts with Thunderbird. Email accounts can use either the IMAP or POP protocols. Follow these steps to create a new IMAP account:

1. Select File:New:Account.
2. Select "Email Account" and press "Next."
3. Enter your name and the email address associated with that account and press "Next."
4. Select IMAP and enter the name of the server used for incoming email.
5. Press "Finish."
6. To depart from any unwanted defaults, refer to step 9 in the tutorial, above. For example, you migh need to specify the use of SSL, configure a different outgoing SMTP server or directory server for this account.

How do I add an account for CSE news?

See How to Use Thunderbird with CSE News.

How do I add a new outgoing server (SMTP)?

First, pull up the "Mail and Newsgroups Account Settings" dialog box from the "Edit" menu. Click on "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" (at the bottom of the pane on the left). Click on "Advanced," then "Add." Fill in the fields in the dialog box that appears. It should be safe to leave the port number field empty.

How do I configure for my u.washington.edu "deskmail" email account?

Follow the steps for How do I add another email account?, above. Use these configuration settings:

email address

<username>@u.washington.edu or simply <username>@washington.edu.

incoming email server

<username>.deskmail.washington.edu. Use SSL.

outgoing email server

smtp.washington.edu. Check "Use name and password and "Use TLS (if available). Enter your UWNetID username in the User Name field.

directory server

Hostname is directory.washington.edu. Base DN is ou=People,o=University of Washington,c=US.

UW Technology offers instructions for configuring Thunderbird 1 with the UW email service here.

What about Thunderbird 2?

At this September 2010, writing, Thunderbird 2.0.24 is available but past end of life, meaning that there will be not more updates— even for security. However, if you are still using it, local configuration help is available here.

What other documentation exists?

UW Computing & Communications offers a document called Configuring Thunderbird for Windows for UW Email. They also explain how to configure the newsreader.

Thunderbird has built-in help. Click on "Help" on the menu bar. Besides the configuration topics covered in this document, they explain how to actually use the mailer. The sections on "Controlling Junk Mail," "Importing Mail Messages," "Working Offline," and "Signing and Encrypting Messages" are all interesting.

I configured my account to compose messages in [HTML,plain text], but sometimes I want to send a message in [plain text,HTML] instead. Must I edit the account settings just to change the mode for one message?

If you press and hold the Shift key when pressing the "compose" button, you will override the default for that one message.

Can I use my preferred editor instead of Thunderbird's builtin editor?

Yes, with some effort you can, using the External Editor add-on for Thunderbird. Read about it here.

I've been using MH. Can I migrate my folders to be usable with Thunderbird?

Yes. More precisely, you can migrate your email to be used with any supported IMAP client. Imagine that you wish to migrate an MH folder called CSE666 to IMAP. First, create the folder CSE666 as a folder for messages. (I am assuming that, like me, you are keeping all your folders in a subfolder called mail.) Then, at a Unix prompt, execute the following command:

    packf +CSE666 -file ~/mail/CSE666

packf is actually an MH command that converts the one-file-per-message MH format to, by default, the Unix "mbox" format that our IMAP servers can use.

I'm an Exchange user. Can I migrate my email to be usable with Thunderbird?

Yes. Brian Bershad has written instructions on How to Stop Being an Exchange User. Follow those instructions.

Thunderbird Help has a section on importing mail and mail settings, and promises help (that I haven't reviewed) for users of Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora.

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