Using the Boards with Thunderbird

How to use the boards in Thunderbird (or, presumably any other client, but they're crap).
Thanks to igy who actually sent me the settings for this.

Connecting to Redbrick

To connect you have to forward a port as part of your ssh connection, so this will only work while you're connected to Redbrick. On Redbrick, the only server that supports this is deathray, so you must connect to deathray first, and then you can ssh to murphy.

Linux/Unix/Mac

Normally, to connect you would type something like:

ssh username@login.redbrick.dcu.ie

Instead type:

ssh -L 1119:carbon.internal:119 username@carbon.redbrick.dcu.ie

and you'll be prompted for your password like normal. To get onto minerva then just type:

ssh minerva

If you're really cool and use gnome, you can setup a nice desktop launcher with this command:

gnome-terminal --command="ssh -L 1119:carbon.internal:119 username@carbon.redbrick.dcu.ie" --hide-menubar

Windows

Open putty, and select the tunnels options page.

As above, enter:

Source Port: 1119
Destination: carbon.internal:119

then click the add button.

Once that's done go back to the session options.

In the hostname box add

carbon.redbrick.dcu.ie
or 136.205.15.1

You'll want to save all these settings so you don't have to do this everytime, so type a name in the box as shown above, and click save. Next time all you'll have to do is double click on "redbrick" in the saved sessions list.

Click open to start the connection. You'll be prompted for your username and password as usual. Once you've done that type

ssh minerva

to get back to minerva.

Setting up Thunderbird

Go into account properties, select add account, pick newsgroup.
Enter your name, and your redbrick email address.
For Newsgroup server enter "localhost"

Once you've done all that, all that's left to do is change from the default port to the one we've set up the forwarding on, so go into the settings for the account and change the 119 to 1119.

To subscribe to boards, just click on "Manage Newsgroup subscriptions".

And thats it, happy posting.