Thunderbird and Local Mail

papal_authority · Veteran Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1823 Location: Canada

I tried Googling for this to no avail. If a user has a mailbox (in mbox format) in /var/spool/mail, how can I get Thunderbird to import that mbox instead of connecting to a server for new mail? I can't seem to see any support for local mailboxes, just POP and IMAP. Anyone know how to get Thunderbird to do this? TIA

codergeek42 · Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2004 3:47 am Post subject:

Run your own mail server and let Tbird connect to that.
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papal_authority · Veteran Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1823 Location: Canada

I run my own SMTP server and I used to run a POP3 server when I had tons of room mates. I just didn't want a server running for one user. I guess I may have to though, thanks for the suggestion. I might be able to deliver it with procmail straight to the Thunderbird mbox I guess. I wonder if a symbolic link from Thunderbird's inbox to the mbox in /var/spool/mail would work? Anyone tried that? I'm really surprised that Thunderbird doesn't support local mail boxes ... it seems rather trivial.

papal_authority · Veteran Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1823 Location: Canada

Well I screwed around with links. It worked for reading but not deleting. I finally had to run a POP3 server as codergeek42 suggested. So far I'm not impressed with Thunderbird (as a Mutt user). It won't check for new mail on startup (even though that option is checked). It will get mail if I click on the "Get New Mail" button though. It's got two sets of folders, one labeled as the name of the account that I set up and the other labeled "Local Folders". What the heck is "Local Folders" used for? I can't delete it (well not from within Thunderbird). I had to hack a line into the prefs.js file to get it to open URLs with Firefox. I couldn't get the GUI to do this and after Googling, it seems I'm not the only one. I always seem to hear rave reviews about this app. I guess it may be the best GUI Open Souce email client but I submit that's simply because the competition is so lacklustre, KMail is a steaming pile and Sylpheed is worse.