How to configure Mozilla Thunderbird for user with JBoss Mail Server 1.0M3

versions: 1.0M3, 1.0M4, 1.0M5-pre1

Overview

Mozilla Thunderbird is a modern and robust mail client and is generally more secure than Microsoft Outlook although we support Outlook as well.  You can consider it as the companion to Mozilla's popular browser Firefox.

This article originially appeared on the JBoss Blog, but we ripped off the text/pictures and repurposed it for these pages.  Note that the settings used assume that you have installed JBMS with SMTP+TLS support and POP/SSL.  Your configuration may vary if you have not, but this should give you the general idea.

Walkthough

I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail client. If you use another mail client, that's okay, but the

screenshots below are from Thunderbird. Your mail client will most

likely use similar terminology. When I open Thunderbird, I get a

menubar at the top of the screen. I select Tools->Account settings:

A screen like like this pops up:

I click add account and am taken to the account wizard:

Obviously I want an "Email account".

If this were a real external facing mail server it would say

something like president@whitehouse.gov rather than

andy@powerbook.localdomain. Anyhow, these settings are just fine so I

press next:

I select POP (IMAP is available in 1.0M5-pre1 but we do not yet have instructions for configuring TBird to use it) and

choose "powerbook.localdomain" as my mail server (just like what I

configured in the installation). I uncheck global mail store since I

want these test mails separate from my work emails.

Andy is indeed my username.

This is just a description for the overall account that will appear as

the category in the left hand tree on the main screen for your inbox,

sent, trash. The email address makes a fine label, so I click next.

How nice! Thunderbird has congratulated me on this amazing feat!

However, I am not quite done since it has chosen my default SMTP server

for outgoing mail rather then powerbook.localdomain! Let us fix that by

clicking okay and going to the Tools->Account settings and

navigating to andy@powerbook.localdomain (or whatever you set).

On OS X for some reason it does not really like connecting by name

so I change the server to "127.0.0.1" (this wouldn't be a problem for a

real server, but I am running locally on my laptop). I also make sure

that "Use Secure Connection (SSL)" is selected. Thunderbird doesn't

appear to support TLS (version 1.5 does so use it), so I use my POPSSL instance. Now lets select

"Outgoing Server (SMTP)".

We see my default SMTP server.  Lets add one.  Click advanced.

We should just see the default SMTP server, click Add.

We'll specify the IP as the server name (name is okay normally but

OS X doesn't seem to like "powerbook.localdomain" or even localhost

even though I have /etc/hosts configured and lookupd configured to use

/etc/hosts). I am going to specify that I must pass a username and

password and that I want TLS support. Thunderbird does support TLS for

SMTP and its wise to use it. You don't want to pass your mails and

password over the broad internet in the cleartext do you? Okay not a

problem if we are going to localhost but the point is to lecture you on

the sense of using SSL/TLS! I click OK and go back to my server

settings:

I want to use a different SMTP server than my default so I click Advanced and click the SMTP tab.

Now let us create a test message:

Make sure your From: is set to your new mail server. Also consider

turning off HTML mail in your settings, it annoys most internet users

and only spammers find it exceptionally useful! Send the mail to

yourself so that we can't test POP!

WHOA!  Our mail client does not trust our new mail server!  Okay, its just complaining that we do not have a certificate authority singing our certificate, we signed it ourself.  Accept the certificate and click okay.

You may not see the above screen. It is mostly because I put my IP as

the server name rather than the hostname. Just click okay if you do see

this.

You will now be asked for a password. You do remember what you put

as your password during the install right? Enter it and click OK. It

will send the mail. Now lets click "get mail" for this account from the

top menu bar. You will get more SSL warnings (click okay) and then:

Excellent! As you can tell I send myself lots of mails. Some of them

I even spell correctly! Anyhow, if you have trouble with your general

mail server setup consult the wiki or ask in the forum.

Please let us know if something seems broken.