Thunderbird MCD/Autoconfig - functions not working?

[Da Rock]

Quick question guys - anyone using the autoconfig feature of Thunderbird 
out there? I might have to either create something or add something to 
something else that will actually do the same job otherwise.

I decided to give it a go and see if it might save some work on 
deployment, but the getent function simply doesn't work. I've submitted 
a bug report due to lack of support from mozilla themselves, but I 
thought I might check if anyone might be using it with the current 
Thunderbird.

To get it running I:
created an all.js with the general.config entries under the 
defaults/pref directory.
created a thunderbird.cfg under thunderbird lib directory with a url 
redirect to a server using getent to obtain the username. It is set to 
refresh every hour (atm).

What I get:
Thunderbird starts and asks for account setup. (or an error message if I 
set it)
with the NSPR_LOG variables set I can see it failed to retrieve the 
config with a http error.
the server logs indicate Thunderbird attempted to retrieve the file but 
failed to offer a user so the filename requested is incomplete.

Given the rather interesting background of this feature it might simply 
be a case of wysiwyg- and lucky for that; but I thought I'd query the 
vast resources here JIC.

Cheers