I have been a longtime user of mutt but switched to evolution and/of geary to have less configuration hassle. Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
AV
On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:57:31 +0200 AV volovics@ziggo.nl wrote:
I have been a longtime user of mutt but switched to evolution and/of geary to have less configuration hassle. Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
What does the mail header say?
Guesses: do you have postfix or sendmail installed? I suspect you do and alpine is simply using that. It probably never even needed to go through the ziggo.nl server to send mail. Look at the mail header.
Ranjan
On Mon, 2020-04-20 at 08:25 -0500, Ranjan Maitra wrote:
On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:57:31 +0200 AV volovics@ziggo.nl wrote:
I have been a longtime user of mutt but switched to evolution and/of geary to have less configuration hassle. Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
What does the mail header say?
Guesses: do you have postfix or sendmail installed? I suspect you do and alpine is simply using that. It probably never even needed to go through the ziggo.nl server to send mail. Look at the mail header.
No I do not have postfix or sendmail installed and the mail definitely went through the Ziggo server. The first thing I checked were the headers. To be 200% sure I checked mail on a second pc that is in no way connected to the first.
AV
On Mon, 2020-04-20 at 14:57 +0200, AV wrote:
I have been a longtime user of mutt but switched to evolution and/of geary to have less configuration hassle. Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
A lot depends on whether the mail relay you connect to actually requires a password. Nowadays most do, but it's not an inherent requirement and so some may not.
Aside from that, Evolution doesn't store passwords itself. It uses the Gnome framework for that (IIRC it's called Gnome Online Accounts but I'm not a Gnome user myself), so presumably Alpine is doing the same thing.
poc
On Mon, 2020-04-20 at 16:13 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Mon, 2020-04-20 at 14:57 +0200, AV wrote:
Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
A lot depends on whether the mail relay you connect to actually requires a password. Nowadays most do, but it's not an inherent requirement and so some may not.
It does.
Aside from that, Evolution doesn't store passwords itself. It uses the Gnome framework for that (IIRC it's called Gnome Online Accounts but I'm not a Gnome user myself), so presumably Alpine is doing the same thing.
I suspected something like that but don't know a simple way to check it. I had hoped that somebody with detailed knowledge of Alpine on Fedora could confirm it.
AV
On 4/20/20 5:57 AM, AV wrote:
I have been a longtime user of mutt but switched to evolution and/of geary to have less configuration hassle. Yesterday I had an hour to spare so I decided to have a look at the Alpine email client. I installed and did a minimal config only adding imap, smtp and sender. No password. Out of curiosity I tried to send myself an email (to 'volovics@ziggo.nl') expecting Alpine to ask for my password. To my surprise it looked like the mail got sent without password. Indeed a few minutes later I received it in evolution. Evolution is my default email client on this laptop.
Could Alpine have used the password encoded by evolution? I can't find any comprehensive documentation on the working of alpine and don't feel like digging into alpine internals because I am not going to use it. Maybe somebody with alpine knowledge can explain.
Your mail server will only require a password for relaying mail. Mail to a local user doesn't require one. Otherwise, no one would be able to send you email. I expect that if you tried to send an email to a non-"ziggo.nl" address, it would fail.
-
AV -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Ranjan Maitra -
Samuel Sieb -
VO