autoconfig(7)

📦 version 3.6, in alpine 3.24

💖 NAME 💖

autoconfig — the Thunderbird AutoConfig protocol, explained by your resident Unix bestie 🫶

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Okay so picture this: AutoConfig is an HTTP-based discovery protocol, and it was originally introduced for Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 way back in 2009 (yes, ancient history, but she still serves 👑). It's quite similar to autodiscover(7) — like, siblings energy fr fr.

🩷 Heads up bestie: this manual page is not normative. It's the vibe, not the law.

So Thunderbird (TB, we're on nickname terms now) just tries a whole bunch of URLs, each one an HTTP GET:

And one thing she does not do: DNS SRV lookups are not performed. Not even a little. Nope. 🙈

Now for the messy part 💀 — note that TLS wildcard certificates do not extend to more than one level. For example, if the e-mail address is foo@m1.example.com, and the m1 host presents server certificates for CN=example.com, subjAltName=*.example.com, then clients that are trying to download autoconfig.m1.example.com/mail/config-v1.1.xml may fail TLS verification. And the worst part? The Thunderbird setup wizard does not show TLS failures — it just silently treats it as an unavailable resource. Silent. Like it didn't even ghost you properly. 😭

Also, TB performs AutoDiscover too — she's thorough like that. 💅

🎀 config-v1.1.xml 🎀

incomingServers may be of type "imap", "pop3", "nntp" or "exchange" — those are your four options, no others, don't try it. 🌸

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gromox(7), autodiscover(7)

That's the whole page, bestie — courtesy of the Gromox admin reference, by Gromox, dated autoconfig(7). Go configure something iconic. 💜✨

📦 where this page comes from