[MlMt] MM keeps re-asking for password

[Randall Gellens]

I agree it seems (from what I can see) that MM thinks network problems 
are authentication problems.  What's interesting is that the dialog box 
is for iCloud, which is not affected by the SSH issue.  I also just now 
discovered that the dialog box can go away on its own.  This morning, 
the laptop SSH connection had dropped, as has been happening the past 
few days. MM had the dialog box up asking for the iCloud password, and 
was displaying "(not available)" for those accounts that are reached 
over SSH (not iCloud).  Without touching MM, I hunted in Keychain Access 
for the imap.mail.me.com password, and at one point when I went back to 
MM to check the exact wording in the dialog box, it had vanished.  I 
hadn't yet reestablished the SSH, so the those accounts were still 
greyed out with "(not available)".

The SSH machine is on my local network, so there isn't any NAT involved.

--Randall

On 14 Jul 2020, at 17:02, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

> I've seen stuff like that when there are network issues—I think
> that MailMate gets out of sync and then ignores what's in the
> keychain. That is, the connection drops, it tries to reestablish
> it, and when that fails it seems to decide that the problem was
> with authentication.
>
> As for ssh: my guess is that it's a NAT timeout issue. A couple
> of years ago, when I was on sabbatical, I had to deal with a NAT
> that was tuned for web sessions. I added
>
> 	ServerAliveInterval 60
>
> to my .ssh/config file for the relevant destinations.
>
> On 14 Jul 2020, at 12:16, Randall Gellens wrote:
>
>> MailMate 1.13.1 on OS 10.13.6.
>>
>> Most of my accounts are set up with a server address of 1.27.0.0.1, 
>> which uses an SSH tunnel to connect to the mail server.  Other 
>> accounts, including iCloud mail, go directly (not via the SSH 
>> tunnel).  All passwords are saved in the keychain.  Starting a few 
>> days ago, for some reason the SSH connection drops after a few hours, 
>> always while the machine running MM is idle (e.g., overnight or when 
>> I am out of the room for a few hours).  I haven't yet figured out why 
>> the SSH connection keeps dropping, but the only effect of that should 
>> be that MM loses connectivity with the server for the accounts that 
>> need the SSH tunnel.  However, whenever I return to the machine and 
>> the tunnel has dropped, MM has a dialog box up asking me to re-enter 
>> the (app-specific) iCloud account password.  I put it in, check the 
>> box to save it in the keychain, and MM is happy until the next time 
>> the SSH connection drops.
>>
>> The dialog says:
>>
>> 	Enter password for “...” at “imap.mail.me.com”
>>
>> 	Password does not exist in keychain.
>>
>> 	Note: If you use two-step verification or two-factor authentication 
>> then you probably need an application specific password.
>>
>> 	https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204397
>>
>> 	Please enter password for user name “...”.
>>
>> --Randall
>>
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>
>
>
>         --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb


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