Thunderbird 17.0.2 can not fetch imap because it mixes username and mailaddress. Let username be foo@mydomain.bar or 1234 (both can be used at same time) mydomain.bar runs the IMAP server and foo@myotherdomain.bar is an alias to foo@mydomain.bar 1. Create a new account with the wizard for a large provider that uses usernames and mailaddresses as USER like domainfactory (http://df.eu) for foo@mydomain.bar 2. IMAP WORKS 3. Now change the mailaddress and the account name to foo@myotherdomain.bar leave the username in the serversettings as they are. But leave IMAP-SERVER and USERNAME untouched. 4. IMAP FAILS Thunderbird is confused and tries to fetch calims it could not fetch mail from server "foo@myotherdomain.bar" 5. The workaround: If you change username foo@mydomain.bar to the username 1234 thunderbird will fetch from the correct server again and IMAP WORKS.
Upstream? This is a well known annoyance, I think.
should we close https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455770 ? I think Thunderbird 17 is quite old (31.4.0 currently) and no one will ever care about this bug again.