How can I open mailto links in firefox composing in thunderbird?

Problem

On ISG.EE managed workstation I cannot open a mailto-link in firefox to compose the mail in thunderbird. What can I do?

Solution

Crate a directory (if not present) named bin in your home. Change to the new created directory and write there a file firefox-mailto-fix with the following content:

# This script allows FireFox to send mailto: links
# to Thunderbird

PATH="/usr/sepp/bin:$PATH"

THUNDERBIRD="thunderbird"
THUNDERBIRD_REMOTE="thunderbird -remote"

#echo "Firefox mailto: $*" >> $HOME/log.txt

MAILTO_URL="$1"
#Strip off the protocol as this confuses Thunderbird
MAIL_DATA=`echo "$MAILTO_URL" | /bin/sed -s 's/^mailto://'`

if $THUNDERBIRD_REMOTE 'ping()' ; then
    $THUNDERBIRD_REMOTE "mailto( $MAIL_DATA )"
else
    #The mailto needs to be in the format mailto:someone@example.com
    #eg not mailto://someone@example.com
    $THUNDERBIRD -P default -compose "$MAILTO_URL"
fi
exit 0

Finally make the script you created executable, with chmod u+x firefox-mailto-fix.

Then open firefox and type about:config in the address bar, and create a new key network.protocol-handler.app.mailto with value /home/$yourusername/bin/firefox-mailto-fix, where you should substitute $yourusername with your unix login name.