1718495 - New account setup autoconfig changes user setting

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Janos Kövari]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

Set up a custom email account. The server provides both IMAP and POP3 access. In this case POP3 must be used. Set up everything in the wizard correctly.

Actual results:

Then clicked on test settings, and the wizard changed the account type to IMAP because it apparently prioritizews it over POP3 and thinks that is better for me?

Expected results:

The wizard should have left it as I set it up manually (POP3).

Also, the server/account type can not be changed later once the account is created. (Not that I know how? It's not obvious.)

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does "test" means rerun the autoconfig?

Comment 2

[Janos Kövari]

I don't know what that means. In the hungarian version there is a button down there that literally says "Retest". Maybe it is "re-run the autoconfig and reconfigure everything and discard everything the user has set up already", just it's meaning lost in translation?
To me re-test menas, test the above settings, and doesn't mean change the above settings. If that button does that, the translation should be clearer.

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Does this happen with 91 as well? The account setup was completely rebuilt from 78.

Comment 4

[Janos Kövari]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #3)

Does this happen with 91 as well? The account setup was completely rebuilt from 78.

Trying on 91b6 right now.
Account #1: local server, providing both imap, pop3 and smtp. accessed by it's non-fqdn hostname, like: xy@local-server
Autoconfig finds the correct settings for both incoming (imap) and smtp and username (xy without the domain part).
Switching to Manual config: hostname is prefixed with a dot. Defaults to IMAP but the port number is 0. Username is the email address. Same for SMTP. Trying to "retest" here results in host name not found. removing the . before the hostname and retesting finds the correct settings.
Manually setting up both the imap and smtp, setting to starttls and normal password, then doing a retest, changes password to encrypted password (which the server also supports) but I want just plain passwords and the wizard does override my settings.
HTH

Comment 5

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

This is an autoconfig deliberate action we're doing, which basically pre-fills the fields with the recommended settings.
We could potentially consider not doing it if the fields are "dirty" but that might prevent users from getting the correct configuration.
Magnus, what should we do here?

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I'm not sure I understand the (original) problem. But

• filling in incomplete hostnames on fail, like ".example.com" I always found very annoying. A blank field would be much preferable, then it's obvious you need to fill it (how would end users understand it can't be .example.com?)
• changing server type from IMAP/POP3 does not adjust to the default port for each protocol (it should' if the user didn't touch the port value

We shouldn't change settings for pwd unless it's set to Autodetect.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

duplicate of bug 1719043 ?

Comment 8

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)

duplicate of bug 1719043 ?

It's related, but not a direct duplicate.