Setup Mozilla Thunderbird for Kolab 2

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Note: This setup will give mail functionality only!

Sync Kolab

This is a project that is attempting to bring Kolab functionality to Thunderbird. Please see http://www.gargan.org/extensions/synckolab.html for more details.

SyncKolab currently supports:

  • sync of contacts with the Mozilla Thunderbird address book
  • sync of tasks and calendar entries with the Lightning plugin

SyncKolab does not support:

  • free/busy information
  • notes
  • automatic discovery of folders (annotations). You have to setup the folders on your own

There are some limitations due to the thunderbird address book/calendar implementation (especially when it comes to which fields are correctly synchronized), but for basic functionality everything should work fine.

Mozilla Thunderbird - Mail setup

Add an IMAP account to thunderbird:

  • Go to account settings (under tools or edit menu, seems different on linux and windows), add account.
  • Choose Email Account, click next
  • Enter name and email address, click next
  • Select IMAP as incoming server type
  • Enter hostname of incoming (and outgoing) server, click next
  • Enter username This defaults to your full email address! If you have not entered a different UID during setup, enter your full email address as your username, click next
  • Choose an account name, click next, click finish
  • You should now be on the account settings page. Select server settings for your new account and tick "use SSL" (This is optional, but recommended)

Mozilla Thunderbird - LDAP address book setup

  Via LDAP you get read-only access to the shared addressbook. 
  • Open account settings and select your kolab server account, click on Composition and Addressing
  • In the addressing section, select "use a different LDAP server"
  • Click "Edit Directories"
  • Click "Add", give the addressbook a name and enter the kolab server's hostname.

The Base DN should be dc=yourdomain,dc=com (if your domain was yourdomain.com). For Bind DN use cn=yourfirstname yourlastname,dc=yourdomain,dc=com

Base DB and Bind DN require only the domain name, not the FQN of your server!

  • Click the "advanced" tab, in search filter, enter (objectclass=*) edit this - is there a better search filter? Better? Who knows, but another working filter is (mail=*).
  • Click OK to save changes
  • Highlight the new LDAP directory you just made, click edit, click offline tab, click download now. This should ask for a login; enter your login details and if you want, tick the box to save password. If nothing happens here, go back and check all your settings for the directory. Note: You might not see any addresses in the address book. Do not worry just yet.
  • Select Tools -> Options -> Composition -> Addressing. Put a check mark in "Directory Server" and select the directory you added.
  • Now when you enter addresses in the TO field of new mail, they will be autocompleted, or you will get a dropdown of possible matches
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