0

Running Thunderbird 8.0 on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

I have an NNTP server that has public and private forums on it. I thus have two accounts set up, one for NNTP with no credentials, and one with a username/password set.

This works fine, when I first set it up. But I have about 40 newsgroups subscribed, with up to date read stats on them.

Now, they have changed the username and password on me.

I figured out, in right click Settings on the account Server Settings tab, I can untick Always request authentication when connecting to this server and it will prompt for the password again.

But this time they changed the user name as well on me, and there is no where in the UI to set the username!

I know if I delete and recreate it I can get back in, but that is astonishingly painful, so I would prefer not too.

Any ideas?

geoffc
  • 1,125

1 Answers1

0

While I was writing this, I think I figured it out, so I will answer my own question for two reasons. To share (since I could not find this via Google) and because next year when it happens again I will forget how.

If you look at the Properties of the Account, Server Settings tab, you can get the newsrc path, look two directories higher to get the Profile directory path.

In there, I found a text file, signons.txt (and if you have more than one account they are numbered in order) that holds the base64 encoded usernames AND passwords. That kind of really sucks as base64 won't stop anything.

The format of the file is:

#2e
.
news://news.server.com (news://news.server.com/#password)

~
*
~aG9xxyz==

---
.
news://news.server.com (news://news.server.com/#username)

~
*
~bab2djIwMTE=

---
.

Names and servers changed to protect the innocent.

Anyway, if you edit this file, (I tried putting in base 64 encoded proper values for username and password) on the next login it prompts you for the username and password again. So maybe I should have just deleted it, but this seems to be the key file.

geoffc
  • 1,125