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I'm trying to configure Thunderbird to read local mail, as described in the answer in similar question: How do I read local email in thunderbird?

However my mail is stored in /var/mail/username file. Thunberbird is looking for mail in /var/spool/mail/ and I get errors that this directory can not be read.

How to configure Thunberbird to read mail from /var/mail/username?

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Sfisioza
  • 153

2 Answers2

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$ ls -l /var/spool/mail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Feb 14  2012 /var/spool/mail -> ../mail

As displayed, my /var/spool/mail is just a symlink back to /var/mail. I didn't create that but if you don't have it, and it's causing you significant grief in Thunderbird, I wouldn't hesitate to add a link:

sudo ln -s '../mail' /var/spool/mail

And now I read the original answer, it does suggest to use /var/mail/username and shows a screenshot of how to specify it (in the Server Settings tab).

If you're getting read errors and /var/spool/mail exists check:

  • file /var/spool/mail to make sure it's the right thing

  • stat /var/mail/$USER is it accessibly by your current user? Is it owned by the right person? Have you copied this from a filesystem with different UID/GIDs? If in doubt, reset the permissions back to the correct ones:

    sudo chown $USER:mail /var/mail/$USER
chmod 0600 /var/mail/$USER
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Oli
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The other answer, about the wrong path and/or permissions, was for older versions of Thunderbird (versions under 91.x). That type of account was, unfortunately, removed.

With newer versions, one solution is to install dovecot on the machine and then create a Mail Account using $USER@imap.localhost. By default, it will ask you to accept the snake oil certificate that dovecot uses. You could install a valid certificate if you feel like it. For local data, it's certainly not necessary.

In May 2025, I did not have to change anything after installation for dovecot to work in this way. All the defaults were perfect (that being said, it does open port 143 and 993 with IP addresses 0.0.0.0 and :: which means anyone on the Internet can access your installation if you allow connections on those ports; my firewall prevents such so I'm safe).

Alexis Wilke
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