Using Thunderbird with RULink

Thunderbird is an open-source mail and calendar system. It is part of the same project as Firefox. See the Thunderbird site for more information and a download link.

This page documents how to access the primary RULink services using Thunderbird:

• Calendar: the calendar plugin for Thunderbird
• Mail

It is perfectly OK to use just one of these, e.g. to access the RULink calendar but use a different mail server.

Calendar

To use Thunderbird with calendaring, you need to download Lightning, the calendar plugin for Thunderbird. See the Lightning Project Home. As of November, 2006, there is a separate download for Lightning with support for the Sun Calendar System (WCAP). You will need to use that download. However future editions of Lightning may require separate downloads for the Lightning core and a WCAP plugin.

Inside Thunderbird, use Tools, Addons, Extensions, and Install the plugin you just downloaded. You will need to restart Thunderbird to make it effective.

Once Thunderbird is started with the calendar, you need to create a calendar and subscribe it to your RUlink calendar. You can pull down "File" and choose New Calendar, or in the Calendars section in the left margin, choose "New".

This will start a new calendar dialog. Specify

• On the Network
• Format: Sun Java System Calendar Server (WCAP)
• URL: for you primary calendar, use https://rulink.rutgers.edu:1025
• Nickname: whatever you like

When asked to login, use your NETID@rutgers.edu as the username, and your network password.

By default, Lightning will use the username with which you login as the calendar ID. Because RULink supports multiple domains, your calendar ID is not just your NetID, but rather NETID@rutgers.edu

I recommend that you not tell the system to save your password until you have verified that it can see your calendar. Once you save your password, it is very difficult to get out of certain error situations.

If you want to look at another calendar, e.g. for a room or another user, you will need to specify that in the URL. E.g. to look at my calendar you would specify

https://hedrick@rutgers.edu@rulink.rutgers.edu:1025

You would then login with just your NetID.

Note that what you put in the URL is the calendar ID. Calendars have two identifiers: a calendar ID and a calendar name. The ID is the NetID for individual calendars, and a name without spaces for resources such as rooms. The calendar name is a human-readable name, which typically does have spaces. You have to use the version without the spaces for this.

If you actually try my calendar, you will get an error. It will say it is a minor error and continue. I believe the problem is that you have read-only access. While the system will do its best, you should select the calendar and choose "Edit" then click the read-only box.

This code is still being worked on. Later in 2006 we expect a version that will list the calendars you have access to and let you choose one.

Mail

This page assumes that you are using RULink as your mail system. To do so, you need to go the administrative interface, http://rulink.rutgers.edu/admin. Click on "Manage mail delivery/vacation messages", and choose "I will read mail on this system."

NOTE: If you read email from another system at Rutgers, you may still find it useful to use the two items involving Composition and Addressing. The setup described there will work no matter what system you read mail from.

Configuration options in Thunderbird:

In Tools, Account Settings, use the following settings:

• Server Settings: server name rulink.rutgers.edu, username your netid, security settings choose "SSL" or "TLS". Other settings depend upon your personal preferences. [NB: If you have problems with getting mail, i.e. connections seem to "hang" or time out, you will need a different setting here. See below.]
• Composition and Addressing. check "use a different LDAP server", then edit directories. In the resulting dialog, add a directory server
  • name: rutgers
  • hostname: ldap.rutgers.edu
  • base dn: ou=people,dc=rutgers,dc=edu
  • port: 389 [the default]
  • bind DN: blank
  • Do NOT click SSL
  then make sure that this directory shows in the box underneath "Use a different LDAP server"
• In the Outgoing server section, server name should be smtp.rutgers.edu (or possibly rulink.rutgers.edu), click "User name and password" and enter your netid as the user name. Click "SSL" or "TLS".

In preferences,

• Under Composition, choose "Addressing." Click both "Local address books" and "Directory server" (which should be the directory server you added above). Also click "Automatically add outgoing email addresses to my Personal Address book"

This will cause the system to recognize addresses as you type them in the "to" box. It will recognize all faculty/staff addresses, as well as any address you have sent email to before.

The system has an incredible number of other options, so you might want to go through both the account settings and preferences carefully.

If you have problems with TLS

In the instructions above we suggested checking either SSL or TLS. TLS is the newer protocol, and is slightly preferred. Unfortunately TLS does not work properly in Thunderbird 1.5. As of March 31, 2006, the problem has been fixed in beta builds of versions 2 and 3, but not for the next maintenance release of 1.5, which is currently called 1.5.0.2. If you are willing to try a beta build, take a look at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/ . By the time you read this, Thunderbird 2 may well be the current version. If it is, you should simply be able to choose TLS and it will work.