User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008033102 Thunderbird/3.0a1pre When you create or edit an SMTP server that requires authentication, the dialog allows you to check "Use name and password", but then leave the user name field empty. This can mislead a user who believes (wrongly, but reasonably) that Thunderbird "already knows" the user name and will supply it automatically. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Add an SMTP server in the normal way, checking "Use name and password" 2. Do not type any user name. 3. Set some identity to use this SMTP server. 4. Try to send a message from this identity. Actual Results: Thunderbird asks for the password, so everything looks OK (if you do not look too closely). Then sending fails with the "unknown reason" error message. If you store the password, then subsequent attempts simply fail "unknown reason". There is no indication that this is an authentication problem. An authentication problem would usually bring back the password dialog or present a message from the server. Expected Results: The SMTP Server dialog should at least disable the OK button when user input is inconsistent. A better design would be to remove the checkbox and use the presence of a user name to determine whether to authenticate. With this design, if the user name is missing, then a server that in fact requires authentication will normally provide an appropriate error message.

but there are servers where you need no username but a password.

Can you provide an example of such a server for me to test? Even if such servers exist, Thunderbird does not appear to support them. It closes the connection without ever trying to authenticate. See attached log, and also: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/compose/src/nsSmtpProtocol.cpp#1165

I know my dialup ISP didn't require one back in the day, because they could tell who was calling when you dialed in. If you were using SMTP from outside the network, though, you had to identify.

Yes, there are plenty of SMTP servers that do not require authentication because access to the local network is restricted. In the design I am proposing, you would simply leave the user name field empty for those servers.

Is this problem still existing?

Somehow I do not understand this. In comment 0 it seems you complain that TB allows leaving user name empty in the SMTP editor. Then in comment 4 you say that is a valid situation. In comment 1 a user says there exist servers where no username is required, only a password.

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.

(In reply to :aceman from comment #6) > Somehow I do not understand this. In comment 0 it seems you complain that TB > allows leaving user name empty in the SMTP editor. Then in comment 4 you say > that is a valid situation. > > In comment 1 a user says there exist servers where no username is required, > only a password. Martin, or Magnus, do you have some idea of how this might be improved?

It seems not to be a big issue when looking at the age of the bug and no activity in it. Maybe it's also no more a problem since we have the account wizard. So I think this could be closed as wontfix. But let's see what Magnus thinks.

Agreed.