There is a patch that fixes and completes MFT support in Thunderbird 2. It's just the last patch from Bug 204339 backported to TB 2 together with the patch from Bug 325429.
You don't need this for Thunderbird 3!
This works with kubuntu 8.04 and probably with all other debian based systems:
sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev fakeroot devscripts [...] sudo apt-get build-dep thunderbird [...] cd /tmp apt-get source thunderbird [...] cd thunderbird-2.0.0.*/debian/patches wget http://www.leptonite.org/mft/mozilla-thunderbird-2.0-bugs204339+325429.patch [...] echo mozilla-thunderbird-2.0-bugs204339+325429.patch >> series cd ../.. debchange --nmu # this opens an editor, append .0 to the version number: thunderbird (2.0.0.17+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1.0) hardy-security; urgency=low * Non-maintainer upload. * Mail-Followup-To patch -- Daniel Faber <mail@daniel-faber.de> Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:01:23 +0100 thunderbird (2.0.0.17+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1) hardy-security; urgency=low * RELEASE security/stability update 2.0.0.17 (USN-647-1) [...] dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc [...] sudo dpkg -i ../thunderbird_2.0.0.*.deb [...]