[TriLUG] thunderbird and auth_method

[Tanner Lovelace]

On 12/14/06, stan briggs <stan at stanbriggs.com> wrote:
> all,
>
> i'm new to thunderbird and like what i see so far. well, except that i can't
> send email from thunderbird. (my 'other' imap client [outlook]) works fine
> with my dovecot imap server but, alas, thunderbird does not, yet. the short
> question seems to be how do i get thunderbird to use the authentication
> method 'LOGIN'. it seems to use 'PLAIN' and i can find nowhere to change it.
> the prefs.js file does not seem to be very well documented. there appears to
> a place there to set this value (auth_method) but no documentation as to
> what to change it to.
>
> anyone have any ideas?

In this context, LOGIN and PLAIN should be exactly the same.  The IMAP
spec only specifies the LOGIN command, there's no such thing as an IMAP
"PLAIN" command (ref: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2060.txt section
6.2.2).  The only
other way to log into an imap server is to use the AUTHENTICATE command
and it only works with KERBEROS_V4, GSSAPI, or SKEY
(ref: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1731.txt).

Note that this means if you use the login command and you don't
want your password to be sent in cleartext you need to implement
TLS or SSL on the connection.

Cheers,
Tanner

-- 
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.