Ubuntu 10.04, Thunderbird 17.0.5.

In the past few days a curious malfunction has been observed. After booting in the morning, for an hour or two all outgoing Emails are sent properly. Then something changes... from that point on, all outgoing Emails are seen in the Sent folder but they never arrive at the destination. It is as if they aren't really sent.

Rebooting doesn't help.

Re-installing Thunderbird didn't help.

Powering down the router and modem, then powering up the modem and router doesn't help.

My ISP is Earthlink, and I can go to https://webmail.earthlink.net and, from there, send Emails without difficulty.

Please advise.

Daniel B. Martin

I'm assuming that you've double-checked your port and smtp settings in Thunderbird. I have an idea for troubleshooting.

Try opening Thunderbird from the command line. Then try sending a message. If an error message, appears in the terminal, post it here, being sure to surround it with "code" tags which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button at the bottom of the compose post windows.

Confession of ignorance...
I know how to launch a terminal session.
I know how to execute a script from within a terminal session with something like this:
I don't know how to open Thunderbird from the command line.
The command is something like this ...
... but I don't know how to cause this to execute.

Please advise.

Daniel B. Martin

1. open terminal
2. type in the word "thunderbird" (without the quotes)

That is all.

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Give this a go

Cheers

1 members found this post helpful.

This could also be a network issue, I'll be watching this thread and thinking/standing by for some network troubleshooting.

I did this without difficulty. A familiar Thunderbird gui opened. I sent a message. A popup window flashed briefly, giving barely enough time to read it. It said "Message sent successfully." Returning to the terminal session there was no error message.
My Thunderbird Sent folder contains the outgoing message. It appears to have been sent but never arrives at the destination. I've made experiments with the destination specified as myself, as a friend, and as both. Same result in all cases... the message looks as if it was sent (and maybe it was) but it is never received. Rebooting is no help... and yet, the following morning everything works normally for a few hours.

I contacted Earthlink Technical Support. Their agent was patient and asked a lot of pertinent questions but had no idea of what is wrong or how to fix it. From his point of view (and this is understandable) Earthlink is working right, Thunderbird is working wrong, and he has no knowledge of Thunderbird.

Daniel B. Martin

Your problem may not be with thunderbird. what smtp server are you sending stuff through? is that earthlink's server you're using? can you send successfully via a different client?

how about sending email to a disposable address, like 10minutemail.com? I find that temp addresses do no filtering on incoming messages, so sometimes they receive messages that otherwise get eaten.

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Done. Same result as reported in post #7.
Daniel B. Martin

I groped around to discover the smtp server identification but didn't find it. It's there, surely, but I'm unfamiliar with this aspect of computing. I must have keyed in that identifier six years ago when I bought this PC and initialized Thunderbird. Can't remember ...
My ISP is earthlink but cable broadband is provided by TimeWarner and I am billed by TimeWarner so I don't know whose server is involved.I can send Emails without difficulty from the Earthlink gui (https://webmail.earthlink.net). I also have a seldom-used Juno account and that account sends and receives Emails normally.Never heard of this facility. I'll look into it, but cannot do that right away.

Thanks to all for the guidance and ideas... Keep 'em coming!

Daniel B. Martin

If you right click on your email add (in the left pane on my version) the last entry is Outgoing Server (SMTP)

And although this is probably not your issue you are running a 6 year old distro and Thunderbird 17.0.5. I am running Thunderbird 45.1.1 which I guess is reasonably up to date. A lot has happened since your version was created (28 iterations) - have you thought of upgrading?

Cheers

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Yes, and that is another problem and may be the subject of a separate thread.

I have two computers sitting side by side.
The "Production Machine" has Ubuntu 10.04 which is long out of service.
The "Test Machine" has Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Cinnamon 64-bit, which is almost up and running.
I have not been able to move all my Thunderbird mail files.

The stumbling block at the moment is that I can't find the special file /home/daniel/.thunderbird/zrumnqmu.default/Mail/Local Folders on the Test Machine. I can't figure out how to instruct Catfish to display hidden files. On the Test Machine, Catfish doesn't behave the same way that on-line tutorials say it should.

Daniel B. Martin

There are many ways to view hidden files in Ubuntu.

Here is a link to one solution:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubunt...-file-browser/

Apparantly yes, my outgoing messages are handled by Earthlink's server.This looks okay.

Daniel B. Martin

Here is the IP address to that earthlink server: 207.69.189.201

Might come in handy for you. Sometimes weird dns problems can cause things like this and so hard-linking it via the IP can sometimes work or at least help you troubleshoot.

Which external dns are you using? You could try forcing 8.8.8.8 into your pc's dns settings and trying again.

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