322584 - No option to enter username for newsgroup account

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Jeff]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: version 1.0.7 (20050923)

My usenet newsgroup server requires both a username and a password. However, Thunderbird has no location to which I may fill in an account username. It only prompts for a password which won't work without the username. Once when going into the "server settings" from account manager I saw an incorrectly displayed box prompting for a username, but it overlapped the display of the box that prompted for the server name. The dialog box obviously wasn't drawn correctly, but I filled it out anyway. The settings didn't take as it still prompted that my password was wrong despite entering it correctly. I was unable to reproduce this and only see a server name setting with no option to enter a username anywhere now.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create new newsgroup account through wizard
2. Right click account, select properties. Click through all options available and see that there is no "username" field to be filled out anywhere in the wizard or the account settings window.
3. Try to subscribe to a newsgroup but be prompted for a password. Note that there is no option to enter a username that would coorespond to this password.
4. Give up and try a different news reader, and hope that the bug gets fixed.

Actual Results:  
It prompts for a password but no username.

Expected Results:  
Should prompt for a username too.

Something is funky here, as obviously you have code to include a username field occasionally but it isn't getting "triggered" to be displayed or prompted for on my machine. Once I saw it flash on there but only once, and it clearly was not being positioned correctly on the account settings dialog box because it overlapped the other fields.

Comment 1

[Jeff]

I keep going into the account settings window again and again and now have gotten it to look differently. I don't know what is triggering this, but it occasionally provides a space to fill in a username (I've seen this twice), but most of the time it does not. It almost seems to be mixing up the panels between what should be visible for news verses mail accounts. I have uploaded screen snapshots to the two ways I have seen this window displayed to my webserver at the URLs below. Note that the one which does prompt for a username (although the username setting apprently isn't being recognized when entered), seems to have additional options that are chopped off at the bottom of the window. I noticed this because I can hit the tab key a few times as it cycles between their selections before it tabs back up to the top. I don't know what these hidden settings are as they appear to be below the bottom of the window.

Here is a screen snapshot of what I usually get which doesn't prompt for a newsgroup server username:

http://www.jeffszone.com/externalposts/bugzilla.mozilla.org/mozilla_thunderbird_1.0.7_news_account_settings_with_typically_no_password_prompt.jpg


Here is a screen snapshot that prompts for a username and has a bunch of additional settings, some which are too far down to fit in the dialog box, although even the username setting doesn't "take" / is ignored:

http://www.jeffszone.com/externalposts/bugzilla.mozilla.org/mozilla_thunderbird_1.0.7_news_account_settings_with_occasional_password_prompt.jpg


(Sorry for the insanely long URLs, but this helps me to remember what these files are for on my web hosting account so I don't delete them on you, as they aren't linked from any of my own pages.)


-Jeff

Comment 2

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Jeff: NNTP is special with respect to usernames, in that most NNTP servers don't require authentication (actually, auth can be much more convoluted). That's why the name is not in the account manger.

However, the checkbox "Always request authentication when connecting" should force you to login to the server even if the server doesn't explicitly require you to authenticate.

Are the prompts not working? If no response, or if the prompts are working, I will close this bug in two weeks

Comment 3

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESO INCO per lack of response to previous question. If you feel this was made in error, please respond with your reasons why to this bug.