Gmail and Claws

[Yedidyah Bar David]

Not directly related, but I'd like to also point out, as no-one
mentioned this yet:

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/12/less-secure-apps-oauth-google-username-password-incorrect.html

TL;DR: they are stopping Less-Secure-Apps support in June. Blog post
talks about "G Suite", so perhaps does not apply to gmail.com, not
sure.

So: Be prepared to start using OAUTH2, and if your favourite app does
not support that, plan ahead - find an alternative, spend time adding
that yourself, lobby...

My guess is that even if this does not apply to gmail.com, nor to
app-specific passwords, it will likely eventually apply to these.
Didn't do a thorough search on the subject.

Best regards,

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 5:37 AM Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:43:51 +0300
> shlomo solomon <shlomo.solomon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I see what you're doing, but don't see how this would solve my
> > problem. Moving from pop3 to imap would not change the fact that
> > Google is not allowing me to login.
>
> It takes about 10 minutes to make the switch, and if necessary 10
> minutes to switch it back. If it changes the symptom, then your mental
> model of how things really are (as opposed to their design or how a
> sane person would design it) was inaccurate. In other words, the bug
> could be bizarre, and if that's true, 10 minutes is the cheapest
> possible way to find out.
>
> I wish I had a dime for every time somebody said "it can't be that,
> that won't change it" when I recommended a diagnostic test, and then the
> diagnostic test changes it in an unexpected way.
>
>
> > And most probably, Ori is correct
> > in his opinion that the problem is the login to Google services - not
> > to pop3.
>
> >
> > Or do you think that procmail would be allowed to login where claws is
> > not allowed?
>
> That would be fetchmail grabbing your mail from the server. Fetchamail
> grabs it, then hands it off, on your local machine, to procmail to be
> sorted or /dev/nulled. In answer to your question, if Claws is buggy
> when it pulls pop, then swapping in fetchmail would fix the problem.
> Or, if the problem is with Google's pop server but not their imap
> server, then switching to imap would fix the problem. And if the
> problem doesn't get fixed, you ruled out some things.
>
> >
> > Just to remind you of what I wrote in my original post - this has
> > worked fine for many years and since nothing has changed on my end, I
> > have no reason to think that pop3 is the problem.
>
> That's my point. The past few weeks you've randomly gotten this error
> when pulling email. It's an intermittent problem, logic is the usual
> victim of intermittent problem, and it's often best to use an alternate
> set of debugging tactics when dealing with intermittents.
>
> What I'd do in your situation is:
>
> 1) Make a Claws folder just to contain downloaded stuff.
>
> 2) Temporarily configure fetchmail to retrieve from the offending gmail
> account and send the messages to procmail.
>
> 3) Configure procmail to place all messages in your new folder
>
> 4) Look for evidence of login failures
>
>
> In case you're using MH folders with your Claws, here are some docs on
> how to get procmail to drop messages into MH folders:
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/mh-e/Procmail.html
>
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/336420/how-do-you-use-procmail-mda-to-deliver-files-to-be-read-by-mh
>
> https://linux.die.net/man/5/procmailex
>
> http://www.cs.utah.edu/~clake/soc_mh.html
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> March 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-il mailing list
> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il