Debugging Thunderbird

While hunting down issues with DKIM, as mentioned in a previous blog entry, we had to figure out how to make Thunderbird provide us with a log file. According to the docs, to debug Thunderbird you should export some environmental variables (I am using Linux here as the OS in this example. Adjust as needed):

# For bash shell (the default shell on most GNU/Linux systems):
export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=imap:5
export NSPR_LOG_FILE=/tmp/imap.log

Make your life easier and do it inside a script:

raub@desktop:/tmp$ cat thunderchicken
#!/bin/sh
# For bash shell (the default shell on most GNU/Linux systems):
export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=smtp:5
export NSPR_LOG_FILE=/tmp/smtp.log
thunderbird
raub@desktop:/tmp$

This way the environment variables you are setting only exist in the context of the script

raub@desktop:/tmp$ sh -x thunderchicken
+ export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=smtp:5
+ NSPR_LOG_MODULES=smtp:5
+ export NSPR_LOG_FILE=/tmp/smtp.log
+ NSPR_LOG_FILE=/tmp/smtp.log
+ thunderbird
[calBackendLoader] Using libical backend at /home/raub/.thunderbird/emfxtc69.default/extensions/
{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}/components/libical.manifest

If you do that, you will not have a beautiful log file you can then examine as you test things in Thunderbird:

raub@desktop:~$ ls -l /tmp/smtp.log
-rw-rw-r--. 1 raub raub 0 Jun 24 16:28 /tmp/smtp.log
raub@desktop:~$ ls -l /tmp/smtp.log
-rw-rw-r--. 1 raub raub 6464 Jun 24 16:29 /tmp/smtp.log
raub@desktop:~$