[Alpine-info] gmail issues help request

[Eduardo Chappa]

Dear gajs-f0el,

   if you can't remember your master password, there is no way to recover 
it. Which means that you have rendered your password file useless. If you 
think it is not worth trying to recall it and you prefer to restart from 
scratch, then you need to do two things:

1) remove your password file; and,
2) remove the certificate used to encrypt it. You can do this with the 
command

rm -rf ~/.alpine-smime/.pwd

Then execute the command

touch your_password_file

to create an empty password file. Everything else will happen 
automatically after that. I hope that will help you get on the good path 
to authenticate in Gmail.

-- 
Eduardo

On Fri, 10 Jun 2022, gajs-f0el at dea.spamcon.org wrote:


> I've begun experiencing big headaches using Alpine to interface with my gmail accounts (2 of them via IMAP). I think my problems predate,

> at least in part, google's June 2022 system changes. So I'll ask about the problem I was having prior to the recent google changes and see

> whether the increasing issues I'm having subsequent to June 1st might not be addressed or resolved by addressing that.

>

> So Alpine recently implemented the ability to save passwords to disk in encrypted form. That seemed like a great idea to me, so I began

> using it. Shortly thereafter Alpine stopped accepting the password/passphrase I'd set up to encrypt/decrypt the saved passwords. I tried

> every one I think I could possibly have used, but none worked. There is, of course, the possibility that I used some unique password I'd

> never used before, though that remains a remote possibility. So I think I will need to restart from scratch on that front before

> attempting to address additional issues that have cropped up in the past few days, should those persist after resolving the

> password-saving issue.

>

> Is there a way to delete whatever file/folder/data got created when I previously set a passphrase to encrypt the data saved on disk when

> asked by Alpine whether to save/encrypt the passwords? That's what I hope to be able to do so as to restart the process of saving those

> credentials, which makes the process of checking e-mail much more streamlined.

>

> Also, is there some documentation that explains in greater detail the way this new (subsequent to June 1st 2022) process Alpine uses to

> interface with gmail works? It seems quite complicated with a number of different moving parts. I don't have much hope of or interest in

> understanding in great depth how this all works on a technical level but I would like to get a better handle on the fundamentals of it

> since it may save, in the future, some time and effort in diagnosing things when I encounter obstacles such as the one I'm presently

> facing.

>

> BTW I have in mind an explanation that goes a bit beyond the what is covered on the "Authorizing Alpine Access to Gmail Email Services"

> page, helpful though that is.

>

> Thanks, and thanks for the work of the developer(s) in continuing to support changing e-mail authentication scenarios.

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