gmail, revisited

[Pelican]

leave all mail on the server

What a nightmare it must be providing a mail service for 1000s of users who archive their mail forever.

Yet services like Gmail and Hotmail do it for free.

[Moonchild]

What a nightmare it must be providing a mail service for 1000s of users who archive their mail forever.

Storage isn't all that expensive.

Yet services like Gmail and Hotmail do it for free.

Not free. You and your (not so private) mail are the product. Your mail will be scanned and tracked.

[UCyborg]

I haven't considered POP3 would be better in that case. It's about work mail account specifically. IMAP's caching seemed good enough, I didn't have any issues for over good 5,5 years. From what I could see, storing them like that enables searching in message body to work, I don't have the reason to have them on the disk otherwise.

It's strange that it suddenly became an issue. It actually happened again today shortly after I made the previous post here.

I also think we humans keep way too much digital junk. I'm guilty too. Either stuff accumulates because I don't clean it up regularly or I think something is precious and I should keep it even though it isn't in reality. For the last 10 years, the only device with limited storage I was using was my old smartphone, that kept my habits in check, at least when using that phone. My computer though, it's a holy mess...

[back2themoon]

It's strange that it suddenly became an issue.

Not strange at all if Google changed/"updated" something on their end.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Thunderbird does have to update its OAuth2 implementation occasionally, to keep up with Google (and Yahoo, or whatever).

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I haven't considered POP3 would be better in that case. It's about work mail account specifically.

Off-topic:
I also think we humans keep way too much digital junk

As I said, I was used in receiving (and storing) my mail directly on my work machine (using a personal IMAP server in rare cases I needed remote access otther than ssh). When my institution moved to Gsuite (the paid version of gmail, not sure if it offers more privacy than the free one) I wanted to continue as before, so I use/d fetchmail with the intention to copy the stuff locally and deleting it from the server. In this G's implementation of POP was somewhat better than IMAP, concerning deletion. Still, whatever mechanism (including forwarding) keeps a copy in Bin ... which I delete/expunge manually once per day

Off-topic:
Concerning correspondence storage, people used to keep also paper letters (actually historians might have more difficulties in reconstructing correspondence after e-mail). I do archive (locally) all my e-mail, I have stuff since 1990

[Bilbo47]

I ... set up an app password, and changed my Google account password to it

This is a bad idea, security-wise. It defeats the security purpose of having app passwords in the first place. Any internet hygeine hole that leaks your app password is now also leaking your Google account password, which is closer to advertising your Google account for being taken over - Gmail and all.

When an email client logs in to a Gmail account, it is using the app password and not the Google account password. Again, a Gmail account and a Google account are not the same thing, and need to have different passwords, for security.

Also the Epyrus "account" that logs in to Gmail needs to have its setting as "normal password" and not as "OAuth" for app passwords to work. AFAIR, EP doesn't work with OAuth at this point without going behind the UI's back and setting those prefs manually.

[ko567]

I finally did set up an app password, and changed my Google account password to it, per the instructions.

Changed your Google account password to it? Where does this come from? Quick summary:

1. Enable 2FA on your Google account(s)
2. Create an app password in your Google account. You can give it a descriptive name like "Epyrus", although the name can be anything.
3. The app password is NOT your Google account password. They are different, and they must be different. In fact, if you change your Account password, your app password(s) is revoked and you have to create it again. See link below.
4. In Epyrus, you will enter the app password you created, NOT your Google Account password.

https://support.google.com/accounts/ans ... =en#zippy= (app passwords info)

edit: if your desktop and laptop use the same OS, you can just copy the entire profile and use it on both machines. No need for separate configurations, unless you use different accounts on each system.

I apologize for all the (my) confusion. I have 2FA enabled on my Google account, and I realized yesterday that changing the password to the app password was wrong. So I undid that. Indeed, the app password I had created for Epyrus disappeared after that. So I re-made an app password, and I finally succeeded in getting my personal gmail to work with it! Again, thanks for your (and everyone else's) help.

Yes, the two machines run the same OS (laptop's is on VM), and all accounts are the same. I hadn't thought of copying the Epyrus profile, good idea.

The remaining problem is that I also have a work account that uses gmail "under the covers". I have 2FA set up for that account too. But when I try to set up the account in Epyrus with the app password I generated as above, I get an error message "User name or password is incorrect". I don't know what's going wrong there.

[Moonchild]

The remaining problem is that I also have a work account that uses gmail "under the covers". I have 2FA set up for that account too. But when I try to set up the account in Epyrus with the app password I generated as above, I get an error message "User name or password is incorrect". I don't know what's going wrong there.

Just to be clear, each app password (regardless of the name maybe suggesting it would be per-app) is account-bound, so you'd need a different app password generated in your work account to use with the work account.

[UCyborg]

I switched to app password, will see if I lose mails again after some time. If so, I switch to POP3. Guess I have to add a new account in mail client in that case and go through filters' settings again. Kinda bizarre that there seems to be a consistent pattern with the issue happening every several weeks.

[ko567]

The remaining problem is that I also have a work account that uses gmail "under the covers". I have 2FA set up for that account too. But when I try to set up the account in Epyrus with the app password I generated as above, I get an error message "User name or password is incorrect". I don't know what's going wrong there.

Just to be clear, each app password (regardless of the name maybe suggesting it would be per-app) is account-bound, so you'd need a different app password generated in your work account to use with the work account.

Thanks, that wasn't clear to me.

[Bilbo47]

Is it possible that Ggl is backing off of OAuth2 and being more reasonable about supporting traditional IMAP+SMTP logins+passwords?

Another email client has given up on jumping through Ggl's newly-costly hoops for developers to maintain OAuth permissions for their apps. Using an online guide, it was easier than ever before to turn on 2FA, create app passwords, then use them in clients and turn off OAuth.

[back2themoon]

...it was easier than ever before to turn on 2FA, create app passwords, then use them in clients and turn off OAuth.

This was always possible, and still is. No decision changes from Google, I believe.

[jobbautista9]

Another email client has given up on jumping through Ggl's newly-costly hoops for developers to maintain OAuth permissions for their apps. Using an online guide, it was easier than ever before to turn on 2FA, create app passwords, then use them in clients and turn off OAuth.

Are you talking about Delta Chat per chance? I was wondering why I was no longer getting any new messages there and I realized they've given up on OAuth and recommended app passwords instead which still work...

[SlySven]

How reliable is Epyrus for Gmail? Assuming using mailbox with over 20 GB of mails and set to store all mails locally, using IMAP for syncing.

I'm an Interlink (version 52.9.8194, the last one if I didn't miss any release) holdout (GUI aesthetics) and sometime in second half of the last year, it started happening every several weeks that I would launch the program and all mails would be lost. They literally disappear, folders are gone from the GUI and space on the disk occupied by emails is freed.

You have to realise that IMAP does not store all mails locally. It merely caches them locally, but IMAP is effectively a remote protocol. If there is an issue with your connectivity (for whatever reason! Not necessarily because of your authentication method) then syncing will fail and it may indeed remove your cached copies of mail.
If you want real permanent local storage you should use POP3, and set it up to leave all mail on the server as well if you want to keep accessing it from other devices/interfaces.

Is that always the case or does it depend on the synchronisation settings? IIRC I thought I set mine to keep a full copy of all my IMAP folders on every system I have set up - it certainly takes up enough space (nearly 2 GByte for my main mail account) on the local hard drive.

[Moonchild]

Is that always the case or does it depend on the synchronisation settings?

This is always the case. IMAP is remote (i.e. server mail storage) by design. Depending on the specific implementation of the mail server, there may be some variance in behaviour depending on what responses are provided in case there are connectivity issues but likelihood of local copies being removed if remote presence can't be seen is normal and by design in the IMAP spec.

[Bilbo47]

Is that always the case or does it depend on the synchronisation settings?

This is always the case. IMAP is remote (i.e. server mail storage)

In other words, IMAP works by storing messages on the server. Beyond that, some clients can turn on local "echo" copies.
Supposedly this is to provide some form of offline processing? But local storage is only subordinate to server storage. Whatever happens on the server eventually gets echoed down to local, but not the other way around. Thus "synchronization" is a gross misnomer or false term; "stale ghosts that will disappear" is a better conceptualization.

[back2themoon]

MailStore Home is a good option here.