Current Thunderbird under Linux Mint 22.1 SMTP password issue
I recently became the webmaster for our local American Legion post and built a website through Hostinger. That service also offered a cost-effective email solution for us and I've created a number of email accounts for our office positions and some individuals by name. At the level of service we have with Hostinger, our website/email account domain is not the same as the email servers.
That's ordinarily not a problem, since most modern email applications can either pull domain email hostnames from registration records or gives the user a manual process to enter the email hostnames directly (in our case an IMAP and SMTP hostname belonging to Hostinger).
I had no problem using the manual configuration that Thunderbird supports to set up my first American Legion email address. Email was received immediately and testing outgoing email worked fine. Adding a second American Legion email address seemed to go well - email messages came in immediately - but the outbound testing failed with error messages that the sending client was not recognized.
That sounded like Thunderbird was not trying to authenticate with a password on the SMTP outbound even though I had indicated in the manual setup that a password was required (same as I had in the first American Legion account setup).
I checked the Thunderbird settings to see what saved passwords were recorded in the Password Manager and sure enough their were three IMAP host passwords but only two SMTP host passwords (the missing SMTP host password was for the second American Legion account).
I completely deleted the second American Legion account and tried again - just in case I had accidentally indicated no password needed for SMTP the first time - and got the same result (IMAP host password created, but not SMTP). I then tried deleting both American Legion accounts and then adding them back with the second account being added first this time. At least the problem was consistent - the first account added had both an IMAP host password record and a SMTP host password created; the second account created had only its IMAP host password saved.
I couldn't find a menu item for adding a host password in the Save Passwords settings menu; manually removing the IMAP password to force the system to ask for the password again only ended up with the IMAP host password being added back into the TBird Password Manager.
The version Linux Mint reports for Thunderbird is 1:128.11.1esr+linuxmint1+xia. As far as I can tell the issue only comes up when Thunderbird cannot auto-detect the email servers on its own and it only has a problem when more than one email account has to be added for a manually configured email domain.
Is there a TBird menu item I'm missing that would let me add the SMTP host password for the second account manually? Failing that, is this a known issue that has already been fixed by Thunderbird and should be forthcoming after that version is released as an update by the Linux Mint team?
എല്ലാ മറുപടികളും (6)
When there are multiple accounts on the same server, it's important to have separate smtp servers for each account, and set each account to send through the correct smtp server. Failing to do so usually results in the error message you received.
Sfhowes, I appreciate your reply, but I think we are using different terminology.
account1@americanlegion.org is working both in receiving email (IMAP) and sending email (SMTP). It has accurate host password records in the Thunderbird password manager for both the IMAP host (imap.hostinger.com) and the SMTP host (smtp.hostinger.com). Authentication from my client-side therefore works on receiving or sending email for account1.
account2@americanlegion.org is only working in receiving email (IMAP). The Thunderbird password manager has no SMTP host password saved for account2 in spite of the information being filled in correctly during the manual server configuration. It is acting as if it saw "No password required" in that configuration instead of the "Normal Password" choice that was given.
Commercial third-party email providers rarely give out separate SMTP hostnames for individual email accounts within a single domain. A single SMTP host (or single virtual SMTP hostname for a pool of SMTP servers) for a specific customer domain will validate against unique account name / password combinations to determine if the service will allow a specific outgoing email.
The Thunderbird client on my Linux laptop is being denied on outgoing SMTP for account2 because it is trying to send it without providing a password due to the missing SMTP host password record in the Thunderbird password manager.
You should have an smtp for account 2 that has the same settings as the smtp for account 1, except the User Name is the account 2 address. Many users have multiple accounts on the same server, and they can send from all of them only when there are smtp servers for each account. When you have it set up as in the above link, there will be multiple smtp:// entries in Saved Passwords, with the password for smtp 1 the same as for account 1, the password for smtp 2 the same as for account 2 etc.
sfhowes, I mainly agree with you - just not in the conclusion you are coming to in the cause of the problem.
Yes, in account2, the SMTP hostname is the same as that entered during the manual server configuration of account1 - only the usernames are different. In my previous reply, those usernames were account1@americanlegion.org and account2@americanlegion.org.
If Thunderbird password manager is intentionally forgoing the creation of an SMTP host password record for username account2@americanlegion.org because it already has a host password record for smtp.hostinger.com that is associated with username account1@americanlegion.org that means it would send the password for account1 for any outgoing email originating from account2@americanlegion.org. Since I'm not seeing an invalid password type reply I still suspect it might not be sending any password for outbound SMTP emails from username account2@americanlegion.org.
If it is sending the password for account1 based on its SMTP host record, that is guaranteed to fail at the majority of third-party email providers. The Thunderbird Password Manager shows elements of Provider (smtp://smtp.hostinger.com) and Username (account1@americanlegion.org) so their programming team clearly understands this. In my particular instance, on the addition of the second user account (account2@americanlegion.org) their manual server configuration process is not adding the second username-based SMTP host password record for account2 in spite of all the information being provided during setup.
That looks like a bug to me although I can't discount some strange interaction between Linux Mint and Thunderbird completely.
Just suggestions to verify your setup: - is the DESCRIPTION fiend unique for each SMTP server setup? If not, please put the email account in that field, even if you just put ACCOUNTONE and ACCOUNTTWO . If the description field is not unique, you cannot ensure you are using the correct one. - after doing that, click the account settings pane for accounttwo and look at bottom row that links to SMTP server. You should see the informmation you stored in the description field. If not, click the dropdown menu to select the proper one.
David, thanks for your suggestion. In the Thunderbird manual configuration for email servers, there are two sections - one for the incoming server and one for the outgoing server. There are six fields for the incoming server configuration section (protocol, hostname, port, connection security, authentication method and username) and there are five fields for the outgoing server (protocol is dropped; Thunderbird is making the reasonable assumption of SMTP).
In your reply, using DESCRIPTION to establish uniqueness for a given account's SMTP server setup is accomplished by having unique username fields for ACCOUNT 1 and ACCOUNT 2, which I have.
Your probably aware that Thunderbird has a "Retest" button in its manual server configuration section specifically so that the user can test the settings that were entered (or whether Thunderbird auto-detect is working for any settings that were left blank) and this "Retest" works for what was entered for the values entered for ACCOUNT 1 and ACCOUNT 2 (username is different for each of them). It is only when the account setup was finalized for whichever account was entered during the second setup that outgoing email fails due to an authentication problem.
Again, Thunderbird is failing to record the password entry for the outgoing SMTP host configuration for the second account created. I don't know for sure if this is a Thunderbird bug or if they are calling a third-party library or procedure as part of their setup chain, but this is definitely a bug in the Linux Mint environment.
As a double-check, I used the same accounts in Thunderbird running under Windows 11 and in that environment Thunderbird creates and stores the hostname/username password credential for the IMAP and SMTP servers for both ACCOUNT 1 and ACCOUNT 2. Incoming and outgoing email works for both accounts.
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