[users] Alpine PASSFILE compile time configuration

Discussion:

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 19:07:19 UTC

Greetings all - and thanks for the rpmforge repo!

I'm using

Name : alpine
Arch : i386
Version : 2.02
Release : 1.el5.rf
Size : 11 M
Repo : installed
Summary : Alternative Pine mail user agent implementation
URL : http://www.washington.edu/alpine/
License : Apache License
Description: Alpine (Alternatively Licensed Program for
Internet News & Email) is a tool for reading, sending, and
managing electronic messages.

and am trying to send my emails out via my web hosting
providers SMTP server, because UCEprotect is blocking my
ISP's SMTP server.

My problem is my web hosting provider's SMTP server wants a
password, and I have to keep pasting this each time I send
an email via their SMTP server.

Please could we have the next version of Alpine compiled
with the PASSFILE option, so Alpine will then read the
password directly from the .password-file in my home
directory.

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

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Yury V. Zaytsev

2011-07-02 20:21:06 UTC

Permalink

Post by Keith Roberts
Please could we have the next version of Alpine compiled
with the PASSFILE option, so Alpine will then read the
password directly from the .password-file in my home
directory.

This sounds pretty much explicit:

--with-passfile=FILENAME
Password cache file (NOT secure, NOT recommended)

It looks like we would have to hardcode the name of the password file
for all users (1) and it is actually unclear to me what would then the
behavior of alpine be (2):

* Is it going to quietly save all passwords to this file? (This would be
totally unacceptable for most users and extremely rude from our side!)

* Is it only going to read the passwords from the file if it exists and
the password for the specified server is indeed in there?

Having this said I am very reluctant to turn this feature on.

Post by Keith Roberts
My problem is my web hosting provider's SMTP server wants a
password, and I have to keep pasting this each time I send
an email via their SMTP server.

I think that you are approaching your problem from the wrong angle. Why
wouldn't you set up a system-wide MTA as a smarthost instead?

--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 20:41:36 UTC

Permalink

To: Discussions regarding Repoforge for users <users at lists.repoforge.org>
From: Yury V. Zaytsev <yury at shurup.com>
Subject: Re: [users] Alpine PASSFILE compile time configuration

Post by Keith Roberts
Please could we have the next version of Alpine compiled
with the PASSFILE option, so Alpine will then read the
password directly from the .password-file in my home
directory.

--with-passfile=FILENAME
Password cache file (NOT secure, NOT recommended)
It looks like we would have to hardcode the name of the password file
for all users (1) and it is actually unclear to me what would then the
* Is it going to quietly save all passwords to this file? (This would be
totally unacceptable for most users and extremely rude from our side!)
* Is it only going to read the passwords from the file if it exists and
the password for the specified server is indeed in there?
Having this said I am very reluctant to turn this feature on.
From what I have read on the net, Al[ine will only use the

password file if it exist in the users home directory.

http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Post by Keith Roberts
My problem is my web hosting provider's SMTP server wants a
password, and I have to keep pasting this each time I send
an email via their SMTP server.

I think that you are approaching your problem from the wrong angle. Why
wouldn't you set up a system-wide MTA as a smarthost instead?

Are you suggesting that I sent up my own SMTP server here on
localhost, to do the mail sending for me?

If so what would you suggest please Yury?

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Websites:
http://www.karsites.net
http://www.php-debuggers.net
http://www.raised-from-the-dead.org.uk

All email addresses are challenge-response protected with
TMDA [http://tmda.net]
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Yury V. Zaytsev

2011-07-02 20:56:56 UTC

Permalink

From what I have read on the net, Al[ine will only use the
password file if it exist in the users home directory.
http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Ok, that doesn't look so bad, but now I see that Dag has explicitly
turned this option off in favor of "platform-specific password caching".
I wonder if these options are incompatible...

Dag, do you think we can turn it back on?

Are you suggesting that I sent up my own SMTP server here on
localhost, to do the mail sending for me? If so what would you suggest
please Yury?

No, I am suggesting you to set up an MTA (be it sendmail, postfix or
whatever you like most), which would relay your locally submitted mail
through an external SMTP server and consequently take care of
authentication; you can additionally make it listen for SMTP
connections, but this is not strictly necessary.

I.e.: http://www.joshfrank.com/articles/sendmail_smart_host

--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 21:08:15 UTC

Permalink

To: Discussions regarding Repoforge for users <users at lists.repoforge.org>
From: Yury V. Zaytsev <yury at shurup.com>
Subject: Re: [users] Alpine PASSFILE compile time configuration

From what I have read on the net, Al[ine will only use the
password file if it exist in the users home directory.
http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Are you suggesting that I sent up my own SMTP server here on
localhost, to do the mail sending for me? If so what would you suggest
please Yury?

No, I am suggesting you to set up an MTA (be it sendmail, postfix or
whatever you like most), which would relay your locally submitted mail
through an external SMTP server and consequently take care of
authentication; you can additionally make it listen for SMTP
connections, but this is not strictly necessary.
I.e.: http://www.joshfrank.com/articles/sendmail_smart_host

Ok. Thanks for that info Yury.

I'll take a look at that sometime soon.

Keith

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Websites:
http://www.karsites.net
http://www.php-debuggers.net
http://www.raised-from-the-dead.org.uk

All email addresses are challenge-response protected with
TMDA [http://tmda.net]
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 21:08:15 UTC

Permalink

To: Discussions regarding Repoforge for users <users at lists.repoforge.org>
From: Yury V. Zaytsev <yury at shurup.com>
Subject: Re: [users] Alpine PASSFILE compile time configuration

From what I have read on the net, Al[ine will only use the
password file if it exist in the users home directory.
http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Are you suggesting that I sent up my own SMTP server here on
localhost, to do the mail sending for me? If so what would you suggest
please Yury?

No, I am suggesting you to set up an MTA (be it sendmail, postfix or
whatever you like most), which would relay your locally submitted mail
through an external SMTP server and consequently take care of
authentication; you can additionally make it listen for SMTP
connections, but this is not strictly necessary.
I.e.: http://www.joshfrank.com/articles/sendmail_smart_host

Yury V. Zaytsev

2011-07-02 20:56:56 UTC

Permalink

From what I have read on the net, Al[ine will only use the
password file if it exist in the users home directory.
http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Are you suggesting that I sent up my own SMTP server here on
localhost, to do the mail sending for me? If so what would you suggest
please Yury?

--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 20:41:36 UTC

Permalink

To: Discussions regarding Repoforge for users <users at lists.repoforge.org>
From: Yury V. Zaytsev <yury at shurup.com>
Subject: Re: [users] Alpine PASSFILE compile time configuration

Post by Keith Roberts
Please could we have the next version of Alpine compiled
with the PASSFILE option, so Alpine will then read the
password directly from the .password-file in my home
directory.

password file if it exist in the users home directory.

http://objectmix.com/pine/244296-how-make-pine-not-ask-password.html

Post by Keith Roberts
My problem is my web hosting provider's SMTP server wants a
password, and I have to keep pasting this each time I send
an email via their SMTP server.

I think that you are approaching your problem from the wrong angle. Why
wouldn't you set up a system-wide MTA as a smarthost instead?

Keith Roberts

2011-07-02 19:07:19 UTC

Permalink

Yury V. Zaytsev

2011-07-02 20:21:06 UTC

Permalink

Post by Keith Roberts
Please could we have the next version of Alpine compiled
with the PASSFILE option, so Alpine will then read the
password directly from the .password-file in my home
directory.

Post by Keith Roberts
My problem is my web hosting provider's SMTP server wants a
password, and I have to keep pasting this each time I send
an email via their SMTP server.

I think that you are approaching your problem from the wrong angle. Why
wouldn't you set up a system-wide MTA as a smarthost instead?

--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev