Thunderbird:Help Documentation:Connecting to an LDAP address book

This is an incomplete documentation of all the options for connecting to an LDAP address book. I am no LDAP expert, but here is how I connected to and searched an LDAP address book.

Active Directory

I did this connecting to a Windows Active Directory, but it should work for other LDAP directories.

• Open up the address book inside Thunderbird.
• Go to Tools | Composition | check "Directory Server" and click Edit Directories.
• Click Add and fill in the following information:
  • Name: Whatever you'd like to call this address book. For this example, I'll use foo.com directory.
  • Hostname: This is the FQDN of the LDAP server. In the Windows world, this will be a domain controller. In this example, the domain controller's name is "server1" so we set it for server1.foo.com.
  • Base DN: This setting depends on how your directory is laid out. Point this to the level of the directory at which you want to start searching for users. For this example, we'll assume you are using a the default in Windows and have all your users under the "Users" container so the setting is cn=users,dc=foo,dc=com.
  • Port number: The default is 389. This will change to the default SSL port, 636, if you check the box for "Use secure connection (SSL)."
  • Bind DN: This is a username that has access to search the LDAP directory. For this example, we assume there is a limited access user setup just for making LDAP queries -- ldapuser@foo.com.
  • Use secure connection (SSL): For most Windows servers you do not need this checked.
• Click OK on the Directory Server Properties window to save your new directory.
• Click OK on the LDAP Directory Servers window.
• Choose your new directory (foo.com directory) from the drop-down list, and click OK on the Options window.

When you type in a name it will prompt you for a password for the ldapuser@foo.com username we entered above with an option to remember the password.