For a customer install that Open Solutions was working on, we had to create the ability to export mailbox settings to Thunderbird- tying in Thunderbird's auto-configuration mechanism.

This is something we need to improve on (i.e. use access keys rather than simple and awful IP pattern matching) as well as document properly.

This feature is disabled by default.

Settings

defaults.export_settings.disabled = true

;; Export settings alowed subnets  
defaults.export_settings.allowed_subnet[] = "10."
defaults.export_settings.allowed_subnet[] = "192.168."

The allowed_subnet array is used for substring pattern matching:

foreach( $this->_options['defaults']['export_settings']['allowed_subnet'] as $pattern )
{
    if( substr( $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], 0, strlen( $pattern ) ) == $pattern )
        // grant access
}

This is neither robust nor safe in general.

Exporting the Configuration

The hardcoded Thunderbird configuration can be pulled via:

wget http://www.example.com/vimbadmin/export-settings/thunderbird/email/user@example.com