Mailing List Archive

Google pop3 authentication failure
I started getting this today.

fetchmail: Authorization failure on <myuserid>@pop.gmail.com
fetchmail: For help, see http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#R15
fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL)

The fetchmail URL is not helpful at all. Here's the stanza for Gmail
in my .fetchmailrc. What do I do now?

poll pop.gmail.com protocol pop3:
username "<myuserid>" password "*********" is "<localID>" here
ssl
fetchall
mda "/usr/bin/procmail -m ~/.mailfilter/.procmailrc":

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
They flushed all the app password creds and forced 2fa.
Need to go through the accounts.google.com login to recover.

On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:42:39AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> I started getting this today.
>
> fetchmail: Authorization failure on <myuserid>@pop.gmail.com
> fetchmail: For help, see http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#R15
> fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL)
>
> The fetchmail URL is not helpful at all. Here's the stanza for Gmail
> in my .fetchmailrc. What do I do now?
>
> poll pop.gmail.com protocol pop3:
> username "<myuserid>" password "*********" is "<localID>" here
> ssl
> fetchall
> mda "/usr/bin/procmail -m ~/.mailfilter/.procmailrc":
>
> --
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
>

--
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
Walter Dnes wrote:
> I started getting this today.
>
> fetchmail: Authorization failure on <myuserid>@pop.gmail.com
> fetchmail: For help, see http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#R15
> fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL)
>
> The fetchmail URL is not helpful at all. Here's the stanza for Gmail
> in my .fetchmailrc. What do I do now?
>
> poll pop.gmail.com protocol pop3:
> username "<myuserid>" password "*********" is "<localID>" here
> ssl
> fetchall
> mda "/usr/bin/procmail -m ~/.mailfilter/.procmailrc":
>


I ran into a failure a month or so ago.  See thread titled "Seamonkey
automatic email download after switch to Oauth2" that I started.  I had
to switch to Oauth2 to access my emails.  The switch itself went well
enough, just ran into another issue afterwards.  I suspect you are going
to have to change how it sends the user/password info as well.  At least
it is something you should check into.  It may be something else. 
Google is switching off less secure methods to send the password and
such.  We got to adjust. 

From what I've read, some don't like Oauth2 but I think it is all Google
supports for now.  I guess they are switching off by region or
something.  Others failed months ago, mine failed a month or so ago and
now yours has failed. 

Hope that helps.  If not, I tried.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
Walter,

On Monday, 2022-06-13 09:42:39 -0400, you wrote:

> I started getting this today.
>
> fetchmail: Authorization failure on <myuserid>@pop.gmail.com
> fetchmail: For help, see http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#R15
> fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL)

See the thread with subject 'Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"' between
2022-03-17 and 2022-04-06 on the "gentoo-user" mailing list.

There's one big gotcha though: shortly before Google's 2022-05-30 dead-
line for the switch to two-factor-authorization, the upstream maintain-
ers of "fetchmail" decided to abandon the 7.0.0 release (coincidence?),
causing the Gentoo maintainers to also drop "fetchmail-7.0.0" from Port-
age.

I ended up cloning the "git" source repository from

https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail.git

checking out branch "remote/next", and then running

export PREFIX=$HOME
./autogen.sh
./configure --disable-IMAP --mandir=$PREFIX/man
make install

which installs the man pages "~/man/man1/fetchmail.1" and "~/man/man1/
fetchmailconf.1" as well as the programmes "~/bin/fetchmail" and "~/bin/
fetchmailconf" in my home directory.

But I think this will be only a temporary solution due to lacking maint-
enance upstream. Looking around a bit I found "getmail" in the Portage
repository which supports OAuth, but apparently only for IMAP. Bummer.

Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides daem-
on mode as well as POP and OAuth support, and also allows to directly
feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?

Sincerely,
Rainer
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 13 Jun 2022 18:41:37 +0200, Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:

> Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides daem-
> on mode as well as POP and OAuth support, and also allows to directly
> feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?

net-mail/getmail


--
Neil Bothwick

Oops. My brain just hit a bad sector.
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
Neil,

On Monday, 2022-06-13 20:20:46 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> > Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides daem-
> > on mode as well as POP and OAuth support, and also allows to directly
> > feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?
>
> net-mail/getmail

Do you know for sure? As mentioned in my original mail I was under the
impression that OAuth is only available together with IMAP but not with
POP3. See

https://getmail6.org/configuration.html#configuring

Sincerely,
Rainer
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 14 Jun 2022 09:52:19 +0200, Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:

> > > Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides
> > > daem- on mode as well as POP and OAuth support, and also allows
> > > to directly feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?
> >
> > net-mail/getmail
>
> Do you know for sure? As mentioned in my original mail I was under the
> impression that OAuth is only available together with IMAP but not with
> POP3. See
>
> https://getmail6.org/configuration.html#configuring

Good point, it's that long since I set up getmail, I had to check if it
was using IMAP or POP, and I'm using it with IMAP. Is there a reason you
can't or won't use IMAP?


--
Neil Bothwick

Q: Why is top-posting evil?
A: backwards read don't humans because
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
Neil,

On Tuesday, 2022-06-14 15:20:36 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> > https://getmail6.org/configuration.html#configuring
>
> Good point, it's that long since I set up getmail, I had to check if it
> was using IMAP or POP, and I'm using it with IMAP. Is there a reason you
> can't or won't use IMAP?

Well, the reason for using "fetchmail" at all is probably historical: It
was the only available mail retrieval utility on Sun's Solaris way back
in time. I am used to (and sort of depend on) running "fetchmail" as a
daemon as well as using the "dropdelivered" directive provided by it for
POP3 which causes fetched mail to be deleted on the server.

But I've meanwhile seen that "getmail" provides the "--delete" command
line option for that. And regarding the daemon mode I could whip up a
shell script which runs "getmail" together with a "sleep 60" command in
an infinite loop. So I could probably give it a try.

Sincerely,
Rainer
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 02:47:16PM +0000, spareproject776 wrote
>
> They flushed all the app password creds and forced 2fa.
> Need to go through the accounts.google.com login to recover.

Sorry for the delay responding. I can login fine with my password on
accounts.google.com but it does not work on pop.gmail.com. What exactly
do I have to do to get it working again?

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On 2022-06-29, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 02:47:16PM +0000, spareproject776 wrote
>>
>> They flushed all the app password creds and forced 2fa.
>> Need to go through the accounts.google.com login to recover.
>
> Sorry for the delay responding. I can login fine with my password on
> accounts.google.com but it does not work on pop.gmail.com.

Google disabled the use of normal passwords for IMAP and POP
authentication a year or so back.

[.These days I say "a year or so back" that could be anything from 5
months to about 5 years. I think "a couple years ago" now averages at
about 7. "Five or six years ago" reaches back to the end of the
Clinton adminstration.]

> What exactly do I have to do to get it working again?

AFAIK, you've got two choices.

1. Use an "app password"

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833
https://www.lifewire.com/get-a-password-to-access-gmail-by-pop-imap-2-1171882

2. Use OAUTH 2.0

https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/xoauth2-protocol
https://oauth.net/2/

AIUI, the latter is considered more secure. But, a lot of applications
don't support OAUTH 2.0 (or if they do, it's via a complex
plugin/helper scheme). For mutt I looked into OAUTH, and it can be
done with some external helper applications. Creating an app password
for mutt to use with IMAP was much easier.

--
Grant
Re: Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 10:26:55PM -0000, Grant Edwards wrote
>
> AFAIK, you've got two choices.
>
> 1. Use an "app password"
>
> https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833
> https://www.lifewire.com/get-a-password-to-access-gmail-by-pop-imap-2-1171882
>
> 2. Use OAUTH 2.0
>
> https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/xoauth2-protocol
> https://oauth.net/2/

I looked at those instructions and also at setting up mutt, which I
currently use. Clear as mud. After scratching my head for several
minutes, I really wanted to scrap my Gmail account altogether, but it
might screw up some other stuff I do with Google. I very rarely use
Gmail, and I do know how to access Gmail via web browser. So I
commented the Gmail stanza out of my .fetchmailrc and I'll use web
browser to access Gmail.

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On 2022-06-30, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 10:26:55PM -0000, Grant Edwards wrote
>>
>> AFAIK, you've got two choices.
>>
>> 1. Use an "app password"
>>
>> https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833
>> https://www.lifewire.com/get-a-password-to-access-gmail-by-pop-imap-2-1171882
>>
>> 2. Use OAUTH 2.0
>>
>> https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/xoauth2-protocol
>> https://oauth.net/2/
>
> I looked at those instructions and also at setting up mutt, which I
> currently use. Clear as mud.

OAUTH is pretty complicated.

However, setting up an app password is very simple. It only takes a
few clicks. Quoting from the google support page (first link above):

1. Log in to your Google Account.
2. Click "Security".
3. Click "App Passwords".

That brings up the App Paswords page

4. Select app (pick app from dropdown, you want "Mail")
5. Select device (pick device from dropdown, pick whatever you want, I recommend custom)
6. Click "Generate"

That will pop up a dialog containing a 16-character password to be used by fetchmail. Copy that password

7. Click "Done"
Re: Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 02:29:03PM -0000, Grant Edwards wrote
>
> OAUTH is pretty complicated.
>
> However, setting up an app password is very simple. It only takes a
> few clicks. Quoting from the google support page (first link above):
>
> 1. Log in to your Google Account.
> 2. Click "Security".

This doesn't do anything. It leaves me at the same page. I do not
see "App Passwords". I've tried this with both Pale Moon and
Google-Chrome. Now what?

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: Re: Google pop3 authentication failure [ In reply to ]
Am 1. Juli 2022 00:33:52 UTC schrieb Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>:
>On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 02:29:03PM -0000, Grant Edwards wrote
>>
>> OAUTH is pretty complicated.
>>
>> However, setting up an app password is very simple. It only takes a
>> few clicks. Quoting from the google support page (first link above):
>>
>> 1. Log in to your Google Account.
>> 2. Click "Security".
>
> This doesn't do anything. It leaves me at the same page. I do not
>see "App Passwords". I've tried this with both Pale Moon and
>Google-Chrome. Now what?
>

It is only available if Two Factor Authentication is also enabled. Everything is documented on the support pages.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839?hl=en
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en


--
Best regards
Daniel