Retrieving emails from Thunderbird/Betterbird

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version Ubuntu Linux 22.04.0
Webmin version 2.202
Virtualmin version 7.20.2
Usermin version 2.102
Webserver version Apache 2.4.52

Unfortunately, despite researching, I haven’t found anything suitable for downloading emails from Usermin, hence my question:

What settings are necessary (Virtualmin, Server, Betterbird) to retrieve emails that are
visible in Usermin?

What parameters (my values ​​in brackets) should be selected for

POP:
Server (mail.domain)

Port (995)
Username (without domain)
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Password (which should be selected: Virtualmin, Usermin or Server?)

SMTP:
Server as above
Port (465)
Username (without domain)
Connection security: SSL/TLS

Thank you for your answer!

Usermin is not a mail server, nor does it contain mail to be downloaded. It is a mail client, just like Thunderbird (well, not just like it, but it does support IMAP/POP, as well as direct access to local mail spools).

The server you would interact with in a Virtualmin system for retrieving mail via IMAP or POP is Dovecot. Postfix for sending.

Username should be the Username you see on the Edit Users page. In a default Virtualmin system this will be user@domain.tld. That is the username. Don’t try to guess. Look at the Edit Users page and use the Username as it is shown.

I don’t understand this question. You should use the username and password of the user whose mail you want to download. There aren’t separate passwords for Virtualmin, Usermin and Server. There are passwords for users. Every user has their own password, and it is the same password whatever they’re logging into. Virtualmin and Usermin and all of the mail services use system users and authenticate to system users.

Virtualmin, on installation, enables POP3, POP3S, IMAP, and IMAPS in Dovecot. So pretty much any protocol should work for mail retrieval, assuming you have a valid TLS certificate for your domain (Let’s Encrypt should work, though many people don’t host DNS locally and end up unable to get certs for all the names you might expect to work, including, e.g. mail). The unencrypted protocols should work regardless of certificate availability.

Similarly, Postfix is configured with STARTTLS and SMTPS protocols on the submission and smtps ports, to support most mail clients. Authentication is the same as everything else: The username and password of the relevant system user.

If getting the username and password right doesn’t solve your problem, you’re going to have to look at the log and give us the exact error you get (the client may not know anything useful to solving the problem, though if it’s a connection failed error, that’s not going to show up in the mail log on the server, and would have to be a firewall or network or DNS issue).

The mail log is probably in the journal on an Ubuntu 22.04 system. So, journalctl -fu dovecot when you try to retrieve mail or journalctl -fu postfix when you try to send. There may also be a log for saslauthd.

This is a screenshot that I have recently sent to someone using Virtualmin as a user:

You can see this on your server on Virtualmin → Edit Users and then tap the Show Email Client Settings button.

1 Like

Thanks for both answers - it works!

Creating a new user (I had previously used the main user) and assigning a proper password provided the solution.

Thanks for letting us know. :slight_smile: