

Original description
ThunderBayes provides a toolbar button similar to Thunderbird's Junk button with which email can be classified as Spam or Ham. Clicking the button causes two things to happen:(1) it sends the source of the selected messages to SpamBayes to be classified and (2) it optionally moves the messages to a folder of your choice (this can be configured in the extension options). It includes a portable version of SpamBayes, and provides a simple preference page in the Thunderbird Account Settings where the SpamBayes POP3 proxy and message filters can be configured
Present state
ThunderBayes 1.0.1 is the last-published original version by Daniel Miller, it still works in Thunderbird 2.x but with major bugs in the account manager that only geeks can solve. This is no longer updated since 2007, includes a version of SpamBayes 4 years old, Python is included with the mininum of libraries
ThunderBayes 1.0.1++ is an unofficial continuation of this project. Since the work of Daniel Miller, SpamBayes has been updated to the latest version on the SVN server so you can try out the very cutting edge software, Python has been updated to version 2.6 and includes the required libraries to work with all the types of database, 64-bit & SSL supports, and since Revision 10, ThunderBayes++ recognizes the SQLite database type not yet in the official SpamBayes, see the changelogs below for more informations
Supported technologies
The plugin supports the POP3 protocol but not IMAP (SpamBayes is not designed for and IMAP will never be considered in ThunderBayes++)
During its development, ThunderBayes++ is tested on Windows 7 in 64-bit and Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Ubuntu 10.04, OSX 10.6 in 32-bit
It works fine on both 32-bit and 64-bit Thunderbird 3.x (versions 2.x and lower are not supported)
Requirements
Windows: nothing, python mysql and spambayes are included in the XPI file, py2exe has been used to build a portable version of python for windows. The Microsoft CRT x86 and amd64 libraries are also redistributed (msvcr90.dll)
Linux: on linux python is installed by default so python-lockfile is the single package to install to support pickle, dbm, sqlite and cdb database types, if you plan to use MySQL, you must install python-mysqldb and mysql-server, etc...
MAC: Just like for linux
WARNING: On some Linux distributions, AppArmor security application is known to block the execution of the MySQL server by the plugin, create an exception to it or disable it completely
First steps in ThunderBayes
- When you are new to ThunderBayes, the first thing to do is check your POP3 account details are correctly recorded in the accounts manager of Thunderbird
- Also in the Account Manager, you must then activate ThunderBayes for each POP3 account you want to filter with the antispam
- Click OK and at this time SpamBayes is properly configured to receive, classify and train new emails
- The training of new messages is done directly within Thunderbird via the button in the toolbar plugins, or present on the shortcut menu, right click the mouse
- Once a sufficient number of trained emails, your database will SpamBayes powerful technology far surpassing standard Gmail, SpamAssassin, Thunderbird
A few tips
- ThunderBayes and SpamBayes communicates via HTTP
- ThunderBayes and MySQL communicates via pipename on windows and socket file on linux, MySQL doesn't listen on IP by default
- The ThunderBayes++ plugins stores its settings in the prefs.js file owned by Thunderbird
- SpamBayes has its setting in the spambayes_data directory owned by ThunderBayes
- MySQL has its ini file in the extension directory, logs are near databases in spambayes_data
- Python for windows has its log file in the extension directory
- Remember to disable ThunderBayes on each POP3 accounts before to uninstall or disable it, so the remote hosts and ports will be restored
- When you change the type of database, it is preferrable to restart Thunderbird
- Before performing a conversion of the database, consider making a backup of the old
- Make regular backups of your databases, because if your computer crashes or your disk is stopped suddenly when SpamBayes was classifying or training emails, it is possible that your database has been damaged, corrupted and is unreadable. (MySQL databases can be repaired)
- Remember SQLite, MySQL, PGSQL and ZODB/ZEO are Experimental, (avoid using ZODB/ZEO, although the required libraries to support it are included in the python for windows, this database is not so)
- SQLite is Experimental, it is currently not included in the official SpamBayes and it's exclusive to ThunderBayes++ and I'm happy to share it with you
- Contacts: you are welcome to report bugs and suggestions at MozillaZine in the "official" ThunderBayes++ thread, a few of the changes ThunderBayes++ brings were suggested by you