Thunderbird for local mail (movemail) in Fedora 10

zeeprime · 12-14-2008, 02:41 PM

I'm trying to set up Thunderbird to read from my local mail spool in Fedora 10, and can't figure out how to do it!

This is a fresh install of Fedora 10, added RPMfusion, yum update, then yum install thunderbird. I have not implemented the workaround for the DNS bug, but I think that is completely unrelated to this issue.

I've set up sendmail, working fine. Mail is piling up in /var/spool/mail/[user]. I see it in mutt.

I had this working fine before the upgrade, using the movemail option in the account setup wizard. Now I don't see that option.

I've searched the boards, zillions of posts suggest using "Unix mailspool"/movemail. Yup, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. But that option doesn't appear!!! I know the spool is readable. I've read the howto and the faq, same answer. About:config shows mail.use_builtin_movemail is set to true (default).

Other suggestions are to setup a local POP or IMAP server, but that seems crazy and cumbersome. (not difficult, just a poor solution). The messages are already right here on my hard drive... I just need to get Thunderbird to read them!!!

Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 (20081119)

This really shouldn't be this hard. Am I missing something???

thanks!

zeeprime · 12-15-2008, 06:30 AM

Found this:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365879

Was this option accidentally left out of the linux build, and a new bug?

The problem specifically is that I do not have the Unix Mailspool (Movemail) option in the new account wizard, and I don't see any other way to create a movemail account.

I also don't find an extension which provides the movemail option.

help!

thanks...

Albrecht.Bayha · 05-05-2009, 08:45 AM

Hi everybody,

I actually had the same problem. On my Fedora 10 Installation with the Fedora Thunderbird rpm package I had no movemail option either in the new account wizard.

Just in case somebody still has the same problem here's what I did and what worked for me:

After some research I guessed this might be because the file /usr/lib64/thunderbird-2.0.0.21/isp/movemail.rdf was missing. So I grabbed the tarball from the mozilla download site, extracted just the movemail.rdf file from there to the proper location mentioned above. Restartet Thunderbird and there it was.

Don't know what happens in case of an update though. I guess I'll find out soon enough ;-)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Albrecht

barunparichha · 05-05-2009, 09:25 AM

please verify the type of secure connection you are using.