[Alpine-info] Alpine and GMX mail

[Damion Yates]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 at 03:28, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net> wrote:


> Blind using Alpine - Continued

>

> As I previously mentioned, blind users who previously used gmail got hit

> with a ONE, TWO punch with Alpine.

>

> First, gmail needed a application specific password but it seems that this

> must be done in a graphical user interface which is beyond many (but not

> all) of blind users.

>



I assumed they blocked app specific passwords to be honest, they did where
I work, xoauth2 is the new hotness and ALPINE gained this support over the
past year or so as it's kicked in for people with Google apps domains.

This is probably quite finicky for most to configure without some help I'm
afraid.  But the good news is that it'll cache the auth tokens so pine can
just work as intended.  There are threads on this in the list and others
who can help, I'm limited in my available time but did want to speak out
about the options and what is happening.  Google/GMail are trying to do the
right thing, single passwd access is awfully insecure and people forget
that this is often the method used for account recovery for banks, where
authentication numbers are sent for that etc.  Keeping it secure is
sensible.

On my own apps domain I was also able to disable the ASP/xoauth2
enforcement and return to the insecure single password option.  This might
also help.  This is mostly temporarily laziness by the way, I plan to
switch to xoauth2 when I find time.



> I've been trusted by some to obtain their application specific password.

>

> So far so good.

>

> Then Alpine changed to require a long password to even open the

> application, this is another complicated process to remove it, I've guided

> some through the process which isn't too difficult for those who can see,

> but if your blind it is a challenge.

>


I'm unsure what this is.  Alpine doesn't didn't do this for me unless I've
configured it with a passfile and even then it needn't be long.
Is this very new?  Is this a distribution issue on some linux distribution
or macos?



> Some of the users have moved to gmx.com mail but that's what I'am writing

> about today.

>

> I have a pinerc file that can read (at least) the INBOX, I cannot see the

> other folders but the INBOX is visible.

>

> BUT I canno send mail!

>

> Here's the line I have in pinerc.

>

> smtp-server=mail.gmx.com/novalidate-cert/ssl/user=USERNAME at gmx.com

>

> I get the ERROR "Mail not sent: bad sequence of commands"

>


I suspect this might need /tls rather than /ssl or something similar (the
docs have several options) depending on the protocol used by gmx.  There
are older threads mentioning this.  There are various ways providers can
permit, with starttls and ssl from the start etc.



> I found this suggestion in this lists archived that I should put this in.

> Customized Headers = From: "fName lName" myaddress at gmx.com

>

> But that didn't work, and I couldn't put FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME because

> alpiine rejected this it says "no spaces allowed".

>

> Anyone have a clue?

>

> He needs to use gmx until I get Gmail working in Alpine and I'm getting

> close to doing that

>


Sorry I don't know more specifics about the sending email issue with gmx.

 - Damion
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