[Dovecot] FAQ: setting thunderbird to talk to dovecot

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Sun, 4 May 2008, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-05-02 at 17:27 -0400, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
>> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Ed W <lists at wildgooses.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> How would I do the same under thunderbird from a machine in the same 
>>>> lan (taz.thespider.com)? It seems to keep trying to login as 
>>>> boris at mail.thespider.com, which will not fly.
>>>>
>>>  Thunderbird logs in using whatever *string* you type in the username 
>>> box. It doesn't even have to be in the format of an email address...
>>>
>>      It does seem it is appending whatever string I type in the 
>> username box to the front of the name of the mail server.  So, if I 
>> have the username as boris at thespider.com, it will try to login as 
>> boris at thespider.com@mail.thespider.com
>
> How do you determine that it uses such login? From Dovecot's logs? If 
> this really is happening, there's something weird going on in your 
> Thunderbird. It shouldn't be appending the server name to your login 
> name.

Timo and Ed are right. Thunderbird should be using the string exactly as 
you type it in the username field. It looks like a user-interface issue. I 
just setup an account at localhost with the username:

bhaskell at flibberdygibbet.example.com

When logging in, the dialog box pops up asking for the password for:

bhaskell at flibberdygibbet.example.com@localhost
(extra @localhost)

but the auth plain string (with password boobar) is:

AGJoYXNrZWxsQGZsaWJiZXJkeWdpYmJldC5leGFtcGxlLmNvbQBib29iYXI=
i.e.: bhaskell at flibberdygibbet.example.comboobar
(no @localhost)

This is with a relatively old Linux Thunderbird, but still, It's probably 
not actually using the extra domain when logging in.

Best,
Ben