Why can't I add a chat account in Thunderbird 17.0.4 ESR?
2014-04
Aaron Miller
I can go through the whole process of adding a chat account without a problem (Edit -> Account Settings -> Account Actions -> Add Chat Account... &c., &c.); however, when I click "Finish" at the end of the process, nothing happens whatsoever.
The Finish button remains focused, but doesn't stay in "clicked" state as might indicate that something is going on in the background; the account does not appear in the list under "Account Settings", and I can't see (via netstat) any newly opened connections, or even (via top) any increase in CPU activity for the thunderbird process, all of which would seem to suggest that, well, nothing is happening when I click "Finish".
The options chosen in the Chat Account Wizard (account type, username/password, server settings for XMPP account, &c.) have no effect on the problem; whatever I specify, "Finish" continues to do nothing.
This is Thunderbird 17.0.4 ESR x86_64 binary build, the tarball of which I downloaded from Mozilla and unpacked as per directions. The platform is RHEL5, which unfortunately isn't up to me; neither do I have root on the box.
Everything else in Tbird works, including Exchange integration via DavMail Gateway; only chat poses a problem. I haven't been able to find anything via Google, or in Bugzilla, to explain what's going on.
Philip Durbin
During the upgrade of my workstation from RHEL5 to RHEL6 Thunderbird was upgraded from 2.0 to 3.1. I've noticed that the Back button ([) and Forward button (]) don't work as consistently as they did under Thunderbird 2, especially with RSS feeds.
Here's an example failure case:
- There is an unread RSS item, so I hit Next -> Unread Message (N) to read it
- I hit Back ([) to jump back to a mailbox message
- I hit Forward (]) but nothing happens; I am not moved to the RSS message
Previously, under Thunderbird 2, I was able to hit Back over and over, skipping around from mailboxes to RSS feeds to newsgroups, and then hit Forward over and over to get back to where I was.
Update: I looked around in Mozilla's Bugzilla and comment #8 of Bug 533504 ("Back/forward history may contain null values and prevent the history from displaying") seems to describe my problem exactly. In the failure case above, I see the following in the Error Console when I hit the Forward button:
Error: An error occurred executing the cmd_goForward command: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIRDFService.GetResource]" nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)" location: "JS frame :: file:///usr/lib64/thunderbird-3.1/modules/MailUtils.js :: MailUtils_getFolderForURI :: line 128" data: no] Source File: chrome://global/content/globalOverlay.js Line: 100