772217 - [autoconfig] Thunderbird automatic detection of mail server settings fails for IP addresses

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 647761

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[thunderbird-bugs]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0 Iceweasel/13.0
Build ID: 20120605130312

Steps to reproduce:

New installation of Thunderbird 13.0.1 (British English) on Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.

Thunderbird  was downloaded today, 9 July 2012.  User correctly gave all the information requested when attempting to create the first account.  The IMAP server is on the LAN, it was identified by its IP address (192.168.x.x).  It does not permit plain text connections, only SSL on port 993.  It has a self-signed certificate.



Actual results:

Thunderbird was incapable of determining the correct settings and no way could be found to enter them manually despite the 'manual' button offered by the Thunderbird interface.

Thunderbird was then uninstalled and Seamonkey was downloaded and installed in its place.  Seamonkey had no problems collecting the required settings.  It is now in use as an alternative to Thunderbird, but the users would prefer Thunderbird both because of their familiarity with it and for at least one usability reason.


Expected results:

Thunderbird should have been able to detect the settings.  Older versions of Thunderbird were at least capable of operating with this mail server, even if the route to entering the correct settings has always been, shall we say, tortuous. :(

Comment 1

[thunderbird-bugs]

When attempting to create the account, some buttons on the dialogue box (which in older versions of Thunderbird permitted the user to enter the needed information) are greyed out and inoperative in Thunderbird 13.0.1.  From memory the buttons are "Advanced" and "Create Account".

Comment 2

[John Crisp]

Same problem in Linux. I'd say this a confirmed bug in both versions.

Trying to overcome the tortuous Automatic Account system has been difficult for a number of versions now.

I have a number of tricky accounts that won't ever be detected (I don't WANT them to be detected frankly).

There should be a clear 'Manual Override' button that lets you add things yourself easily without fighting the whole thing.

Workarounds...

1. Have working detectable dummy account. Put in the dummy account settings and let it detect and setup the dummy account. Edit the new Account and add you own settings.

2. Set some EXACT (falsify as necessary) settings in the configuration setup - for Port, SSL and Authentication turn off Auto in each section. You can then get the Create Account button to light up. It will test the settings and fail, but you can then do Advanced config and then change the settings as required.

Comment 3

[David Lechner (:dlech)]

I just helped someone with this on irc today. Instead of the traditional thank you, he signed off with "that's confusing as hell :/"

That's not the words I would choose, but I agree that the Mail Account Setup dialog is very counter-intuitive if auto detection does not work. In order to enable the 'Advanced config' button, you have to select a value for each box that says Auto or Autodetect. As long as one thing remains on Autodetect, you are stuck. There are no instructions or anything to tell you this. I just figured it out by clicking on things until something happened.

At the very least, I would suggest that if autoconfiguration fails, in addition to showing the message that autoconfig failed, add an additional message that explains how to do manual configuration.

Also, I think there is some improvement needed in the auto detection. For example, give my isp a try. Type in vern.gendns.com for both incoming and outgoing servers - you can use anything for email address and password. You will get a message that Earlybird (or Thunderbird) failed to find the settings for you account. This should be easily detected as it uses standard ports and SSL/TLS. I suspect that the hangup is because of the SSL cert. The cert is not trusted by a root authority, so you have to confirm a security exception to use it. This dialog does not pop up during auto-detection, so I think this is why it fails.

I recall bienvenu and BenB having a conversation about the SSL cert exception warning on irc a number of months ago, so we may want to pick their brains.





So, for other users with this problem, a couple questions:

1. Would "Thunderbird failed to find the settings for your email account. Please check the server names and Re-test or select values for Port, SSL and Authentication for each Incoming and Outgoing server and then select Advanced Config." be a more useful message?

2. Does your email server use STARTTLS or SSL/TLS?

Comment 4

[thunderbird-bugs]

Mr. Lechner:

Q2: Yes to both.

Q1: Almost anything would be better than what happens right now, which is so opaque that users will switch to a different mail client rather than struggle with the setup system.  However I think your suggestion is more complex than necessary.  A button as suggested by Mr. Crisp which offers the option of "MANUAL CONFIGURATION" would do the job just fine.

I'm reminded of my wife's $2,000 camera, which won't let you set the focus distance by hand.
So if you want to take a photo of, say, a buzzard, through some trees, you just can't do it.

I really hate software which tries so hard to help that it seriously gets in the way.

Comment 5

[John Crisp]

>I just helped someone with this on irc today. Instead of the traditional thank you, he signed off with "that's confusing as hell :/"

Have to say I wouldn't disagree.

>That's not the words I would choose, but I agree that the Mail Account Setup dialog is very counter-intuitive if auto detection does not work.

No, it's just badly designed and has been for some long while. It isn't even counter-intuitive. It just doesn't work properly. My guess is that the efforts were concentrated into generating revenue by trying get more personal info (checking your email address against their database), and to sell email accounts (more search stuff with their 3rd party assistants). Automation was high on the agenda. Manual setup wasn't worth the effort.

Q1 I would rather a straight forward 

New Account :

"Do you want Thunderbird to try and Autodetect your settings or do you want Manual setup ?"

If Autodetect fails there should also be an immediate option for Manual/Advanced Config setup 

Automatic detection has failed. Do you want to 1. Try again with different settings 2. Manual setup

Not rocket science.

In my TB16 you now have "New - Get a new account" or "New - Existing account" so two menu options where before you had one.... confusing. Also, with Existing it STILL has to go through the autodetecting even though I know it will fail. So it's still as bad as it was.


Q2 Yes to both but irrelevant as it won't find my server. It's MUCH quicker to do it manually rather than waiting whilst it looks up it's database, then tries other stuff and then failing


Jubilee - your wifes camera - it's why I bought a SLR with manual override ;-) Agree completely with the sentiments....

Comment 6

[thunderbird-bugs]

Recently and rather foolishly on a customer's machine I ran 'apt-get upgrade' on the Debian packaged version of Thunderbird (Debian calls it Icedove).  The version installed (I believe it's effectively Thunderbird 10.0.12) was totally incapable of communicating with my customer's local IMAP server, even though the previous versions had been working (modulo the configuration pain hereinbefore mentioned) right up to the upgrade and even though the configuration settings were preserved by the upgrade.

As my customer's email system was basically hosed, in desperation I downloaded and installed Thunderbird version 17.0.3, from Mozilla.  It accepted manual configuration from scratch without complaint, and immediately actually worked with the IMAP server straight away!

Version 17.0.3 of Thunderbird seems very much improved in respect of this bug.

I propose that this bug be closed as fixed.

Comments?

Comment 7

[Keith]

Still a problem in 17.0.7

Original poster complains:  "no way could be found to enter them manually despite the 'manual' button offered by the Thunderbird interface."

Indeed.

DEVELOPERS PLEASE NOTE MY ATTEMPT TO FULLY YET CONCISELY DESCRIBE PROBLEM HERE: After pressing "Manual config" both the "Done" and "Advanced Config" buttons are VISIBLE but DISABLED (preventing one from moving on) until you manually changing all six combo boxes from "Autodetect" to something specific.  It is not clear that this is what is required here to move on.  Users get stuck and frustrated at this point.

In addition, after pressing "Manual config" the "Re-Test" button is still VISIBLE and ENABLED, but it isn't clear (at all) if pressing this will re-test the attempted auto-config, or test (not re-test really) the values you have just entered manually. Does pressing "Re-test" attempt to resolve the values for combo boxes you have left defaulted to "Autodetect"?  It is not clear.  But it seems no.

In addition, after pressing "Manual config" the "Get a new account" button is sill VISIBLE and ENABLED.  Why, that just adds confusion-- at this point I have specified (a) I want to use an existing account, and (b) I want to manually configure it. Why oh why is there a "Get a new account button" on this screen. There should not be.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I was stuck on this screen for 20 minutes before I realized what is required to enable the "Done" button (select values for all six combo boxes).  I was previously leaving some as "autodetect" and clicking "re-test" thinking thunderbird might detect and resolve some items, etc.  Other users probably have the same confusion, see comments above.  Also, the same thing happened to me the last time I installed Thunderbird, probably 18 months ago.   

SUGGESTED EASY SOLUTION:

When user clicks "Manual Config":
   (1) "Get new account" button is NOT VISIBLE, NOT ENABLED
   (2) The "Re-test" button is NOT VISIBLE, NOT ENABLED
   (3) The six combo-box default to BLANK/EMPTY.
   (4) The "Advanced Config" button is always ENABLED (why not).

The six combo boxes being blank/empty directly indicates to the user that they must manually enter values for each.

Comment 8

[Keith]

Here are the account settings that ultimately worked when encountering the problem described in my above comment:

protocol, host, port, encryption protocol, authentication

Incoming: IMAP, mail.onlinetasklist.com, 993, SSL/TLS, Normal password
Outgoing: SMTP, mail.onlinetasklist.com, 25, STARTTLS, Normal password

Comment 9

[Nim Delineif]

:dlech, Keith thanks for “documenting” here that all the fields must be filled‼

I had tried manually specifying the ports but wouldn't have thought that the authentication must be manually set. An «Autoselect» option to make thunderbird automatically choose the more secure authentication method amongst those offered by the server made perfect sense.

While we continue waiting for the proper fix, can the labels at least be changed to a text like « [Select one] » instead of offering «Autodetect» where there is no autodetection?

Comment 10

[Nim Delineif]

(Thunderbird 24.2.0 - 1½ years from bug creation)

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dupe of bug 883613 ?

Comment 12

[:aceman]

Yes, this possibly just needs some hint in the Wizard window.
I don't know of cases where it wouldn't be possible to setup an account in TB.
I don't know what the problem was here in the report. For a server on 192.168.x.x we can't have automatic setting in the ISPDB. Did the server admin publish the needed file for TB to autodetect settings?
If not, for such a server, surely the admin gave instructions on what setting to input manually.
Was it not possible to input them manually?
Apparently, there were some reports that you can't manually input the settings when autodetection fails.
For those cases, there is the "manual config" button. Sometimes this does not appear (I think when TB thinks it detected the settings, but the user wants to still change them). In those cases it is needed to first set TB to offline mode and then start the Wizard.

Ben would know better if there is something to improve here.

Comment 13

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Solution steps:

1. Enter name, email address, password
2. Press [Continue]
3. Press [Manual Config] (or the dialog will do that automatically, if it can't find a server)
4. In manual config, enter a valid config, for both IMAP/POP3 and SMTP
   * syntactically valid hostnames
   * port numbers,
   * SSL
   * authentication methods
   You cannot continue until you do that, because we need all that information to create the account.
5. Press [Advanced Config]
6. Edit everything, e.g. replace hostname with IP address
7. OK.

This works, I tried it.