Heres the rub

I enjoy the Thunderbird email application it's aptitude as an email client coupled with the use of Extensions makes for an impressive experience.

I found this set of extensions while digg'n around a while ago,
http://webmail.mozdev.org/
,allowing the use of web based email hosts to be checked with Thunderbird
however unless Thunderbird is run as root it cannot access the localhost. This throw up and error message warning that it can not connect to localhost and about receiving "bad vibes", kinda funny.

the extensions are configured to access the localhost. As in,
http://webmail.mozdev.org/serversettings.html
,this is unfortunate for obvious reasons.

Does anyone now how to set permissions for Thunderbird to access just to the "localhost or localhostorts" so I don't give any email I check system wide privileges?

actually, you can change the configuration of the plugins [ extentions ] to allow non root use of them, making thunderbird able to check webmail accounts without the root access.

if that doesn't work, then I wouldn't use thunderbird to check webmail, root account being online is a severe security risk and not something to even concider for checking webmail or browsing the internet.

Jaqui is right. It's a bad idea to use root online at all. Many say it's even bad to start X as root.

"bad vibes" is sort of a generic error that just means the webmail extensions are not configured properly or there is a problem connecting to the webmail server (yahoo, google, etc). Make sure you installed them in the correct order, webmail first then client(s), restarting Thunderbird after each. Then make sure your server settings are correct for the localhost and port number, then make sure any firewall is not blocking that port number. I recently discovered that, with Yahoo, there is an extra precaution regarding their new Beta version of webmail.

The forum linked to from the home page is full of information about causes for this error and solutions.

I couldn't find an option to allow non-root access, but I found that setting the ports to higher ones worked for me. This is probably because Linux has built in restrictions on ports 1024 and below.

I don't see any thing in the settings for root access either.
setting the ports higher then 1024 doesn't work for me. My firewall rules allow all out going traffic. It gives me the error "cannot connect to localhost: connection refused"

this has me stumped

Yes I know all to well the power of root that I am unworthy to behold.

I have hosed my system on a few occasions when I was first introduced to linux.

Are you behind a router / hardware firewall?

If so, maybe you could disable your software firewall temporarily. If that does it, then you'll know that your firewall configuration is to blame.

Seems to me that when Thunderbird requests a connection to localhost, it would be seen as an incoming connection by the firewall.

I've seen the "Bad Vibes" and "Connection Refused" errors before. They were related to the server not being properly configured.

The extensions page lists the supported webmail servers. That's a bit of a misnomer, as the servers (MSN and Yahoo, for certain) require you have a premium account. They do not support e-mail client software with freebee accounts.

If you have a premium account, you must edit your account info and change you mail type to "POP".

Hope this helps!

Bill

I don't think its the server configuration bill, cause as root I can access my email accounts, just not as user.
I have disabled my firewall to see but its not the case, and I even
set allowances for 127.0.0.1 and localhost (same thing I know) but still "connection refused"
I'm not behind a router either, I'm on the router box.

I think I'll just use something like the gotyahoo python script on a cron job to forward my email, every hour or so, to my isp's pop account for now.

Thanks for the help everyone I'll put this on the things to figure out later list