Charles Marcus wrote:

So, you'll have to write up simple instructions for new users on how to set up their new accounts...

I have something for this if you'd like a copy (request privately)...

Thanks, but that was kind of the step I was trying to avoid ;)..

What I had in mind was more like:

1. I install Thunderbird.
2. I create an account named <template>.
3. I modify TLS and other settings to work better.
4. I click magic button.
5. Thunderbird creates a new thunderbird_mycfg.exe.
6. User downloads and runs thunderbird_mycfg.exe, which installs Thunderbird, asks the user his/her account name and applies the configuration from step (3), and everything magically works.

Hmm.

Charles Marcus wrote:

On 5/7/2008, rosenfield.albert@gmail.com (rosenfield.albert@gmail.com) wrote:

...

What I had in mind was more like:

1. I install Thunderbird.
2. I create an account named <template>.
3. I modify TLS and other settings to work better.
4. I click magic button.
5. Thunderbird creates a new thunderbird_mycfg.exe.
6. User downloads and runs thunderbird_mycfg.exe, which installs Thunderbird, asks the user his/her account name and applies the configuration from step (3), and everything magically works.

Hmm.

Heh... yeah, thats one of the things lacking in both TBird and FFox is enterprise feature support like this...

Its supposedly in the works though... and when it happens, you'll be able to push it out even easier than you descibe above (assuming you're using WPKG, Active Dirdctory, or something similar ...

you may want to look at

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Thunderbird_ISP_hooks
https://spaces.mtu.edu/clearspace/docs/DOC-1403
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Autoconfiguration
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Autoconfiguration:ConfigFileFormat

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On Wed, 7 May 2008, rosenfield.albert@gmail.com wrote:

What I had in mind was more like:

1. I install Thunderbird.
2. I create an account named <template>.
3. I modify TLS and other settings to work better.
4. I click magic button.
5. Thunderbird creates a new thunderbird_mycfg.exe.
6. User downloads and runs thunderbird_mycfg.exe, which installs Thunderbird, asks the user his/her account name and applies the configuration from step (3), and everything magically works.

I'm currently stuck with SeaMonkey, so I don't know if this works for Thunderbird, too.

On shared computers I install Seamonkey "unattendedly", then the Default User gets a profile pointing to a network share, on which every account has a prepared profile. Then I install %ProgramFiles%\mozilla.org\seamonkey\defaults\pref \all.js", which contains proxy settings mostly.

The prepared profile has been prepared by:

I. Create profile template

1. Create a fresh profile.
2. Fill in all personal data.
3. Close SeaMonkey.
4. Delete everything from profile, that is automatically recreated and does not contain no personal information.
5. Remove many stuff from prefs.js
6. Replace personal data in prefs.js with place holders, e.g. %ACCOUNT% %SURNAME% etc.pp.
7. Same with other files, e.g. signature.txt

II. Deploy profile template to network home directory

1. Copy profile template
2. Acquire user data from database
3. replace placeholders.

Everything in II. will work for a local user, too, but to actually have the generated profile registered. I had took some steps into the direction by invoking SeaMonkey - so it automatically creates the default profile -, terminate it, the deploy script searches for the actually profile path ("%AppData%\Mozilla\Profile or ~/.mozilla/profile), then overwrites the files with the template ones and replace placeholders and corrects the paths in prefs.js. But it was not worth the time, so I did not made no script.

Bye,

Steffen Kaiser -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

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