I've got a private dovecot server set up and I'm trying to set up Thunderbird to retrieve email from it via IMAP on port 143. I plan to set up TLS encryption at some point, but for now I'm just trying to get the two to talk. I don't have a domain name, so upon account creation I input the server's IP address to TB [TB02.png]. This check never ends up passing no matter what I put in the password field, but I'm not sure if TB is contacting the ISP database mentioned here (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/automatic-account-configuration) or if it is actually querying the provided IP address. Now I can bypass this check by clicking the advanced config button (after I manually set up the SMTP options), but then whenever TB tries retrieving mail from the server I get the "Failed to connect to server" notification [TB03.png] as if dovecot isn't even running. I've verified that the server side is working by using a different email client (Simple Mail extension for Firefox) and the dovecot logs indicate that it was receiving those authentication attempts (and the server is only listening on port 143, so that rules out TB and simple mail using different protocols or ports). The server is also running exim4 to handle SMTP connections, but it's only listening on the loopback interface, so TB won't be able to use it as an outgoing server. I'm not sure if that plays a part in account creation or not, so I figured I ought to mention it. So my main problem is that I don't know what Thunderbird is doing and I haven't been able to find any documentation that deals with private email servers, everything I've found says something to the effect of "just put in your email address and it'll take care of everything for you!". Thanks to anybody who decides to try and offer some insight.