Logging is for the industrious developer alone — and for the curious user, of course. In addition to finding out what’s going on behind the scenes of email exchanges in Mozilla Thunderbird yourself (especially if that which is going on is not going right), you can help those helping you with problems enormously if you’re able to send them a log of what’s happening when you try to send or receive mail.

Turning on transaction logging may not be straight forward an affair, but it is not difficult either.

Log POP, IMAP and SMTP Traffic in Mozilla Thunderbird

To create a log file with all POP (Post Office Protocol), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) traffic in Mozilla Thunderbird:

Make sure Mozilla Thunderbird is not running.

Now, on Windows:

• Select All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt from the Start menu.
• Type “set NSPR_LOG_MODULES=” followed immediately by “POP3:4” for POP, “IMAP:4” for IMAP and “SMTP:4” for SMTP logging.
• Press Enter.
• You can enable logging for multiple protocols by separating them with commas (‘,’).
• To log both POP and SMTP traffic, for example, type “set NSPR_LOG_MODULES=POP3:4,SMTP:4” (excluding the quotation marks).
• To log only IMAP traffic, type “set NSPR_LOG_MODULES=IMAP:4“, for instance.
• Type “set NSPR_LOG_FILE=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\tbird_log.txt“.
• Press Enter.
• Type “start thunderbird“.
• Press Enter again.
• Perform the desired email actions in Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Quit Mozilla Thunderbird and take a look at “tbird_log.txt” on your Desktop.

On Mac OS X:

• Open a Terminal window.
• Type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=” followed immediately by “POP3:4” for POP, “IMAP:4” for IMAP and “SMTP:4” for SMTP logging.
• Press Enter.
• You can enable logging for multiple protocols by separating them with commas (‘,’).
• To log both POP and SMTP traffic, for example, type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=POP3:4,SMTP:4” (excluding the quotation marks).
• To log only IMAP traffic, type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=IMAP:4“, for instance.
• Type “export NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/Desktop/tbird.log“.
• Press Enter.
• Now type “/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin“.
• Press Enter again.
• Perform the desired email actions in Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Quit Mozilla Thunderbird and take a look at “tbird.log” on your Desktop.

On Linux:

• Open a Terminal window.
• Type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=” followed immediately by “POP3:4” for POP, “IMAP:4” for IMAP and “SMTP:4” for SMTP logging.
• Press Enter.
• You can enable logging for multiple protocols by separating them with commas (‘,’).
• To log both POP and SMTP traffic, for example, type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=POP3:4,SMTP:4” (excluding the quotation marks).
• To log only IMAP traffic, type “export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=IMAP:4“, for instance. Type “export NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/tbird.log.txt“.
• Press Enter.
• Type “thunderbird“.
• Press Enter again.
• Perform the desired email actions in Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Quit Mozilla Thunderbird and take a look at “tbird.log.txt” in your Home directory.

By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com Guide

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/956/

Who wants this extension?

In office environment there is sometimes a need to forward email with original headers to somebody else. If forward or edit as new command is used, headers are very different comparing to original message (other From, Message-Id, Date fields). If you use Mailredirect Extension headers are not changed, so recipient of redirected mail has almost original message. In practice all important headers in redirected message are identical to original one (From, CC, Message-Id, Date).

This extension is very usefull to send emails unmodified to an spam filter, so it can learn.

http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/