User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:104.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/104.0

Steps to reproduce:

Upgraded from Thunderbird 91.13.0 to 102.2.2. Usenet News accounts for Giganews.com and grc.com converted, but required login whenever checking for new messages, as if the password manager could not remember usenet login credentials. Also, usenet message download went into a loop for any message read attempt, and messages could not be downloaded.

Actual results:

Could not read or post in usenet news groups via giganews.com or grc.com. Since Thunderbird 102.2.2 was not usable with usenet providers, I restored my profile and version back to Thunderbird 91.13.0.

Expected results:

usenet newsgroups for giganews.com and grc.com should have worked the same as in Thunderbird 91.13.0.

Arnold, bug 1785773 looks like it might fix the usenet message download issue, coming with the next update any day from now (102.3.0).

If it's still a problem with 102.3 and later, please attach an nntp protocol log. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging
As a workaround in 102, you can set mailnews.nntp.jsmoduletotrue` to use the old nntp implementation.

I tried installing Thunderbird 102.3.0 on Windows 10 this evening (2022-09-24), and it failed worse than 102.2.2.

TB 102 FAILED to pickup passwords for my giganews.com and grc.news.com NNTP servers from my existing profile. This is a showstopper. It's completely unacceptable.

Every time I tried to download news articles Thunderbird required me to enter the username and password for that NNTP server, TWICE! I checked the passwords were the same in the saved passwords file using Settings, (and the old dates were still present), but I was NEVER able to login to either giganews or grc.news.

All I ever got was the spinning circle (waiting) and no articles downloaded.

When I tried posting a news article, all I got was a message box saying "assembling message" with a cancel button. I had to cancel the message box because nothing ever happened after that, and no article was ever posted.

I even tried changing the setting in the config editor:
mailnews.nntp.jsmodule

It was set to TRUE when I checked it, which was recommended to me.

I tried setting it to FALSE, closed and restarted Thunderbird 102, and tried to login to giganews. Again, it asked for username and password TWICE, but created a new account named news.giganews.com, effectively a duplicate of the account named "Giganews" but incompletely filled out.

It took me a long time to find the option to delete an account because it is hidden in a menu named "Account Actions" which is located at the BOTTOM of the account list, instead of at the TOP, where it should be.

So, I restored my backup Thunderbird appdata local and roaming profile, then reinstalled Thunderbird 91.13.1. After that, NNTP giganews and GRC news are working normally again.

If it makes any difference, my normal email SMTP server which I use for posting to usenet is POP3 rather than IMAP.

I won't be trying Thunderbird 102.3.0 anymore, since it clearly doesn't work for me. I was not able to login to either of my NNTP providers. I was not able to download articles, and I was not able to post or reply to articles. I didn't even get far enough to test the email part of Thunderbird 102, although I suspect it may work for POP3.

arnold.trembley@att.net

I opened a new bug report for this:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1792336

Bug 1792336 -> bug 1787789.

Please check back in 102.3.1 or later.
You are mixing up many protocols above, so it's unclear what you mean. STMP has nothing to do with NNTP. Nor does POP3. Composition is also a completely different thing.

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #1)

Arnold, bug 1785773 looks like it might fix the usenet message download issue, coming with the next update any day from now (102.3.0).

Nope, I tried TB 102.3.0 on 2022-09-24 Saturday night, and it wouldn't work.
Please see the newest bug report:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1792336(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #5)

Bug 1792336 -> bug 1787789.

Please check back in 102.3.1 or later.
You are mixing up many protocols above, so it's unclear what you mean. STMP has nothing to do with NNTP. Nor does POP3. Composition is also a completely different thing.

Yes, I will try again when 102.3.1 comes out. I much prefer to stay current. I'm hopeful that I can upgrade at some point without having to manually rebuild my entire profile.

I only mentioned SMTP because I need to have an SMTP account to post to usenet newsgroups, so it's pretty important that both NNTP and SMTP work. There's not much point in reading usenet posts if you can't reply to them. And I only mention POP3 because I've read some chatter that suggests more problems with POP3 than IMAP in the newest Thunderbird. I may be wrong but I prefer POP3 to IMAP. I would rather keep my data on my computer than leave it in the cloud for years.

Thanks very much for all your help!

Just to clarify: you do not have to have STMP to post to NNTP. They are completely unrelated. To post to NNTP all you need is NNTP.

Really? I would very much like to know how to do that!!

When I look in Thunderbird Account settings for either of my NNTP accounts, it always asks for an "Outgoing Server (SMTP)", and NNTP is NOT an option in the drop down list. Can you direct me to a resource that would explain how to setup an NNTP account in Thunderbird to use NNTP for the outgoing server? Even my Thunderbird email account requires a seperate SMTP account for outgoing mail.

Kind regards,
Arnold

If you go to set up an nntt account, nowhere does it ask you for smtp details. All it will ask is the name of the nntp server and an email to use for display name.

The SMTP section at the bottom of nntp account settings is misleading, the settings there don't affect nntp posting. You can leave it.

I beg to differ. The Account Settings page for an NNTP account always asks for an Outgoing Server (SMTP), and I don't even have to enter it, because it is pre-filled with the SMTP server from my email account. Are you saying I should edit that to be the same as my NNTP account? And what is the server name and port that I should use?

Kind regards,
Arnold

That setting could arguably be removed from nntp, or at least hid away a bit more. I think it's used, but only in the (special) case where you post a message and ALSO send the message to a mail recipient.

Ah, I never thought of it that way. I have certainly seen that done (but rarely done it myself) where a reply is posted to the newsgroup AND emailed to the original poster. I guess you can learn something new every day, and I've only been on Usenet since 1996. Too bad DejaNews was bought out by Google, otherwise I could find that first posting.

Thank you for correcting me.

Tested 102.3.1 on the night of 2022-09-29 thru 2022-09-30.
Installing over existing 91.13.1 old profile did not work well.
POP3 Email sending worked.
Had to login TWICE to news.giganews.com, but could NOT download the newsgroup list.
Had to login TWICE to news.grc.com, but could not send (assembling message, wait forever)

Apparently, I had a user interface third-party XPI installed, because when I retested with an all-new profile I got better results, but lost the folder column headers from the XPI: extra_folder_columns-1.1-tb.xpi (from 2010).

Using an all-new profile, I installed 102.3.1 over 102.3.0 and tested again.
POP3 Email sending worked.

tested news.giganews.com, no login required
could read and post, but could NOT refresh the newsgroup list, so that bugfix for 1787789 did not make in into 102.3.1.
Please see attached log.

tested news.grc.com, no login required
could read and post, and REFRESHing the grc newsgroup list was instantaneous. BUT I had stability problems. After bouncing back and
forth between my email account and my nntp accounts, the nntp accounts got the spinning circle, waiting for something that never came back. I was able to shut down thunderbird and restart it to get back to more normal behavior.
This could also be related to frequently bouncing from account settings to settings to check and change various options.

I lost the folder column counts for Unread and Total that the old XPI provided, but I think the XPI caused problems with 102.x.

But could not login to either news. giganews.com or news.grc.com

This is another console error log, trying to download or refresh the newsgroup list for NNTP server news.giganews.com. Apparently the fix for bug 1787789 did not get into TBird 102.3.1.

(In reply to arnold.trembley@att.net from comment #14)

Tested 102.3.1 on the night of 2022-09-29 thru 2022-09-30.
Installing over existing 91.13.1 old profile did not work well.
POP3 Email sending worked.
Had to login TWICE to news.giganews.com, but could NOT download the newsgroup list.
Had to login TWICE to news.grc.com, but could not send (assembling message, wait forever)

Apparently, I had a user interface third-party XPI installed, because when I retested with an all-new profile I got better results, but lost the folder column headers from the XPI: extra_folder_columns-1.1-tb.xpi (from 2010).

Using an all-new profile, I installed 102.3.1 over 102.3.0 and tested again.
POP3 Email sending worked.

tested news.giganews.com, no login required
could read and post, but could NOT refresh the newsgroup list, so that bugfix for 1787789 did not make in into 102.3.1.
Please see attached log.

tested news.grc.com, no login required
could read and post, and REFRESHing the grc newsgroup list was instantaneous. BUT I had stability problems. After bouncing back and
forth between my email account and my nntp accounts, the nntp accounts got the spinning circle, waiting for something that never came back. I was able to shut down thunderbird and restart it to get back to more normal behavior.
This could also be related to frequently bouncing from account settings to settings to check and change various options.

I lost the folder column counts for Unread and Total that the old XPI provided, but I think the XPI caused problems with 102.x.

But could not login to either news. giganews.com or news.grc.com

(In reply to arnold.trembley@att.net from comment #16)

(In reply to arnold.trembley@att.net from comment #14)

Tested 102.3.1 on the night of 2022-09-29 thru 2022-09-30.
Installing over existing 91.13.1 old profile did not work well.
POP3 Email sending worked.
Had to login TWICE to news.giganews.com, but could NOT download the newsgroup list.
Had to login TWICE to news.grc.com, but could not send (assembling message, wait forever)

Apparently, I had a user interface third-party XPI installed, because when I retested with an all-new profile I got better results, but lost the folder column headers from the XPI: extra_folder_columns-1.1-tb.xpi (from 2010).

Using an all-new profile, I installed 102.3.1 over 102.3.0 and tested again.
POP3 Email sending worked.

tested news.giganews.com, no login required
could read and post, but could NOT refresh the newsgroup list, so that bugfix for 1787789 did not make in into 102.3.1.
Please see attached log.

tested news.grc.com, no login required
could read and post, and REFRESHing the grc newsgroup list was instantaneous. BUT I had stability problems. After bouncing back and
forth between my email account and my nntp accounts, the nntp accounts got the spinning circle, waiting for something that never came back. I was able to shut down thunderbird and restart it to get back to more normal behavior.
This could also be related to frequently bouncing from account settings to settings to check and change various options.

I lost the folder column counts for Unread and Total that the old XPI provided, but I think the XPI caused problems with 102.x.

(CORRECTION). The install of 102.3.1 over 102.3.0 all-new profile worked better than installing over existing 91.31.1 profile, and I WAS able to read and post in both news.giganews.com and news.grc.com without having to login.

So I probably am looking for the next version after 102.3.1 to include that bugfix.