[MlMt] Keeps asking for mail.mac.com password

[Bill Cole]

On 18 Jan 2018, at 22:01 (-0500), Randall Gellens wrote:

> Mailmate keeps asking for my mail.mac.com password.  I created an 
> app-specific one for it, entered it when creating the account earlier 
> today, and checked "save in keychain."  Looking in the keychain, I see 
> it.  However, MM has asked for it several times, saying it isn't in 
> the keychain.  The existing keychain entry has modified time updated 
> when I re-enter it.

Does it actually work when you enter it manually?

Apple's mail system has a history of authentication flakiness, with 
periods where some nodes have required a bare username while others only 
work with the full email address as username. Also, they have been 
moving away from the mac.com domain for a while, and while I think 
mail.mac.com should still work, it's fast-flux DNS via Akamai is much 
faster (30s) than the {imap,smtp}.mail.me.com hostnames given at 
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202304 and that can cause glitches.

If authentication is reliably working when the password is entered 
manually, this could be a problem with your keychain settings or the 
specific keychain item. If you have your keychain set to lock after a 
period of inactivity or when sleeping, an app like MM can misinterpret 
the inability to access a keychain item as the item being gone or wrong 
and not bother to recheck the item the next time it's needed. When the 
machine wakes up and the keychain unlocked, the app tries to fix the 
"bad" item with a new password.

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steady Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole