Re: Imap problems after yrs of use with my config.

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> My remote imap server is imap.fastmail.com.

[...]

> But in the course of this I found a new policy was put in place a
> while ago where to use fastmail servers, you need to get something
> they call an App passwd .. I guess they geared up to handle
> phones/tablets and whatever.
>
> So, I end up with 2 new passwds... one to access my fastmail acc and
> this new policy ... app passwd for .. apparently for smtp server or
> imap server.
>
> OK, so I got account passwd changed about a week ago, and got the `app
> passwd' on friday I think.
>
> I've been unable to access imap.fastmail.com ever since.
>
> I did try with both new passwds, making sure.
>
> I've been in touch with fastmail via a trouble ticket but so far their
> usefulness has been right up there with teats on a boar hog.
>
> They've told me to use the `App passwd' now.  Of course I replied
> letting them know it was not working and waiting now to hear back.
>
> So any suggestions as to what I can do to learn more about why it is
> rejected?

I doubt this is much to do with Gnus in particular. A quick scan of the
Fastmail documentation simply says that your "real" account password
will only work with Fastmail's own app/web client, so you should
definitely be using the "app password" you created for Gnus. Just to
make everything clean, I'd also delete the authinfo line, and give the
credentials manually when Gnus prompts you.

They also say not to use starttls, but it looks like nnimap will try ssl
first, anyway, so that shouldn't make any difference. If you're
a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, you could try setting nnimap-stream
to `ssl' in your secondary methods setting.

In general, when stuff like this doesn't work out, it's usually best to
drop out of Emacs/Gnus and try via the command line. Depending on your
system, you can use something like gnutls-cli or openssl s_client to
manually log in from the command line, and sometimes that will show you
something interesting. At least it might rule out some problems.

Dunno what else to say...

Eric