Thunderbird LDAP via SSL with self-signed certificate

Adding a LDAP directory as a contact source for Thunderbird can be quite tricky if you have SSL-only connection and your server is using self-signed certificate. For some reason there is no Add exception dialog appearing during the first connection attempt as we got used to when connecting to a mail server.

Following will help you to to add the exception manually:

• Go to Config editor (aka about:config, Preferences -> Advanced -> General, press the Config editor button).
• Add new (or edit existing) string key ‘network.security.ports.banned.override‘, set value to ‘636‘. This will disable port blocking feature for port 636 (visit http://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning.html for more info).
• Go to Settings -> Advanced -> Certificates -> View -> Servers -> Add exception.
• Type your_ldap_host:636 to the Location field, click on Get certificate, then Confirm Security Exception.
• Add your LDAP directory to contacts
• Now you can revert the config ‘network.security.ports.banned.override‘ to previous value, it is no longer needed.

Hope that helped ;-)