Ok, sendmail locally on the laptop now w ... / 2010-03-31

Ok, sendmail locally on the laptop now works, but the next step is to get this to work from Thunderbird. I want Thunderbird to present the certificate to use the outgoing relay. To import a certificate into Thunderbird, I need to convert it to pkcs#12 format:

$ openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey thunderbird.pem -in machiavelli.idefix.net.crt -out thunderbird.p12 -name "Thunderbird op Machiavelli"
Enter pass phrase for thunderbird.pem:
Enter Export Password:
Verifying - Enter Export Password:

This gives me a .p12 file that Thunderbird understands so I can import it. But even when I set up Thunderbird to send the mail to the correct server on port 587 with TLS enabled it does not present its own certificate, resulting in a 'relaying denied' message (which is exactly what I want when the certificate is missing!). Time to search further. Maybe something in the certificate needs to match, but searching the Thunderbird help and on-line doesn't give hints.
As a backup I can let Thunderbird send to localhost:smtp and use the sendmail installation there to send it to the server (which it can) but then I can't see whether that worked when I close Thunderbird and disconnect the laptop. I'd rather have some visual conformation that mail is out the door.