Description of problem: Thunderbird won't start in online mode. I have to click the online/offline toggle button in the lower left to get thunderbird online each time I start it. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): thunderbird-10.0-1.fc16.x86_64 How reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start Thunderbird. 2. Note that Thunderbird thinks it's offline. 3. Click online/offline button to go online. Additional info: After some research I think this is because I don't allow Network Manager to manage any of the interfaces on the computer. In Gnome legacy/fallback mode the NetworkManager icon in the top-right shows a X. It appears that the advanced setting "toolkit.networkmanger.disable" set to true should disable using NetworkManager to detect online status for Thunderbird, but setting this to true does not work.
I have the same issue because NM mangles my DNS at boot, so I can't use it. I went to Edit-Preferences-Advanced-Network & Disk Space-Offline Settings and selected Always start up Online, but it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Thunderbird simply ignores the setting. This is related to bug 785618 (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=785618) referring to the fact that NM will always report that an interface is down if it doesn't manage it instead of checking and returning the actual status.
I see. There's nothing we can do with it on the mozilla side, it's a bug in NM. You can disable it by setting "network.manage-offline-status" to false. One of the way how to do it is to set "about:config" as a homepage in thunderbird (Edit->Preferences->General) and then choose "Go->Mail Start Page".
Setting network.manage-offline-status to false has no effect. Surely it's a bug in Thunderbird that it can't ignore NetworkManager when there is at least one about:config setting that should configure Thunderbird to do so? Yes - the NM bug should be fixed as well - but TB should respect toolkit.networkmanger.disable or network.manage-offline-status.
(In reply to comment #3) > Setting network.manage-offline-status to false has no effect. > > Surely it's a bug in Thunderbird that it can't ignore NetworkManager when there > is at least one about:config setting that should configure Thunderbird to do > so? > > Yes - the NM bug should be fixed as well - but TB should respect > toolkit.networkmanger.disable or network.manage-offline-status. Yes, you're right. So any of the options do not work for you, right?
(In reply to comment #4) > Yes, you're right. So any of the options do not work for you, right? Yes, I can't get any to work. toolkit.networkmanager.disable = true does not work. network.manage-offline-status = false does not work.
The magic options seems to be: pref("toolkit.networkmanager.disable", false); pref("offline.autoDetect", true); so setting offline.autoDetect to false should work for you.
I can confirm that setting toolkit.networkmanager.disable to true and offline.autoDetect to false works around the NetworkManager bug.
I got there by going to Edit-Preferences-Advanced-General-Config Editor. Toggling both of those options worked. Still, it shouldn't ignore the option under Network & Diskspace-Offline that says "Always start online." Selecting that should disable any network checks because if it doesn't, there's no point in having it."
(In reply to comment #8) > I got there by going to Edit-Preferences-Advanced-General-Config Editor. > Toggling both of those options worked. Still, it shouldn't ignore the option > under Network & Diskspace-Offline that says "Always start online." Selecting > that should disable any network checks because if it doesn't, there's no point > in having it." Yeah, that's a good point.
I think we'd need an extra switch there - which enables/disables NM to control the online/offline state.
Moving upstream https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=731145