Thunderbird Configuration for POP3S and SMTP

Linux Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Email Client Tools - Mail User Agents (MUA)

∟Thunderbird Configuration for POP3S and SMTP

This section provides a tutorial example on how to configure Thunderbird to use POP3S (POP3 with SSL/TLS) with normal password for incoming emails and SMTP with no authentication for outgoing emails.

Configuring Thunderbird is also easy. But you need to match connection settings exactly to what are supported by the email server.

For example, my email server, running Postfix and Dovecot, supports the following by default:

SMTP service on port 25, with STARTTLS (Opportunistic TLS) and no authentication.
POP3 service on port 995, with SSL/TLS and normal username/password authentication.
Email server address is 192.168.1.100.
Email address is herong@example.com.
Username and password associated with the email address: herong and TopSecret.

So here is what I did to configure Thunderbird with above server settings.

1. On my email server, make sure that Postfix and Dovecot are listening on those ports. Note that POP3 with SSL/TLS is also called POP3S.

herong$ nmap -T4 192.168.1.100

PORT     STATE SERVICE
25/tcp   open  smtp
995/tcp  open  pop3s

2. On my email server, make sure that the firewall is open for those ports.

herong$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-all

public (active)
  services: cockpit dhcpv6-client ftp http imap pop3 pop3s smtp smtps ssh

3. Now launch Thunderbird on the other computer.

4. Open "Set Up Your Existing Email Account" dialog box, by clicking "File > New > Existing Email Account".

5. Enter your name, email address and password.

6. Click "Configure manually". You see more settings.

7. Enter the following:

INCOMING:
  Protocol:       POP3
  Server:         192.168.1.100
  Port:           995
  SSL:            SSL/TLS
  Authentication: Normal password
  Username:       herong

INCOMING:
  Protocol:       SMTP
  Server:         192.168.1.100
  Port:           25
  SSL:            None
  Authentication: No authentication
  Username: