Re: [9front] mail crazyness

[sirjofri+ml-9front@sirjofri.de]

Hello,

that's why I used half a year reading all documentation I could find on plan 9. You need a solid understanding of how things work.

Factotum for example. You need factotum, even if you don't want to store your passwords. Every software uses factotum for authentication.

Upas is nice and opens the default mailbox with your -f parameter. It's important to understand what upas as a filesystem is and read the man page to learn more about it.

Obviously, read the man pages. Start by typing:

man factotum
man upasfs

And read what's there. Also read the fqa. Read the important sections.

I know plan9 is frustrating if you are a beginner, it's good to forget everything you know from other systems, including unix. Start at zero and be a learner.

I hope this is constructive and helpful.

Have fun

sirjofri

23.07.2020 11:56:33 William Gunnells <gunnells@gmail.com>:
> I have never had such a hard time getting something that should be so simple to work
>
> It seems like I type out the same commands over and over again and gamble at what needs to be done.
>
> This a huge amount of confusion. If I boot the system into cpu/auth mode I seem to get further. But honestly I don’t believe it. I know that wherever or however I log in I am glenda
>
> Typing in the same commands over and over is simply silly. Nothing seems to stick
>
> I actually got the mail to work only for the container to accidentally get rebooted because of other issues
> and the fact I really didn’t understand persistence
>
> To actually check mail I have to type the following
>
> auth/factotum. By the way this is either in the profile or cpurc. Not sure why I have to do that. Seems silly.
>
> echo ‘key proto=pass server=imap.gmail.com service=imap user=thinktankworkspaces !password=whaterver’>/mnt/factotum/ctl
>
> then run
> upas/fs -f /imaps/imap.gmail.com/thinktankworkspaces@gmail.com
>
> Even after I get this far I’m still not to sure I did things right. A prompt does ask me to enter the password.
>
> It seems like /mnt/factotum/ctl has two entries,  one with full email including the @ symbol and one without the @ symbol. Seems kind of redundant. Why run the echo statement in the first place.
>
> But no. I’m not done yet
>
> i need to mount this file or open this file
> echo open /imaps/imap.gmail.com/thinktankworkspaces mbox >/mail/fs/ctl Still not sure if I need the @ symbol or not. But guess what I get an error permission denied or its busy or whatever
>
> I have to run upas/fs -n
>
> Honestly not even sure about the order of this verses -f anymore. Seems like -n doesn’t interfere with file or something like that according to the man page.
>
> But it seems to be the only way to mount that file or whatever.
>
> And I have to do that on the same screen, same namespace, because I can’t draw another screen. I already did too much work to get this far.  I can run acme and enter ‘Mail’ somewhere/anywhere then click it and things seem to work. But I can only send email from myself to myself using my gmail.com account. I can’t send it to another person or another email account. I can’t figure out why. It did work before the crash. Oh and I won’t bore you with the details of doing this twice on two draw screens because i wanted to test ‘faces’. Lot's of copy and paste.
>
> I suspect it has something to do with rewrite. I made the mistake of deleting it. But since the original file had very little anyways. I didn’t think it was a big deal to delete it and 'cp rewrite.gateway rewrite'.
>
> Then change the domain to \1@gmail.com. But while it worked before. It no longer works now. I can’t send mail.
>
> I thought perhaps because I deleted and re-created it, if you look closely its owned by Glenda
> ——rw-rw-r-- M 24 glenda upas 1154 Jul 23 06:40 rewrite
>
> Plan9 does not have chown, and chgrp does not work something about stats.
>
> while I have the correct imap in /mnt/factotum/ctl I also made sure I had the correct smtp in /mnt/factotum/ctl
>
> Still now sure what /mail/lib/remotemail is supposed to do. I have run it before to see what it does. It does make a connection without errors. Perhaps this is a wrapper for for upas. Seems logical
>
> I have the correct sender, address and gmail statements as listed in the documentation.
>
> i believe I have the x509 files created for both /sys/lib/tls/mail and /sys/lib/tls/smtp
>
> Why honestly is this so difficult. I believe this to be a huge problem. There is no step by step instructions that say.
>
> Wait!!!! Don’t change screens, because you will be in a different namespace. Oh wait please remember this doesn’t persists. Oh wait you kind of want things in a profile. Why are they not in the profile in the first place. They can be in there and commented out. And HONESTLY. How do I know this profile is really working.
>
> The profile already had the following to begin with.
>
> webfs
> plumber
> upas/fs -n
> rio -i riostart
>
> I still have to type this when I drawterm from another OS. So I don’t see the point.
>
> If I boot to CPU/Auth and want yo run rio from the terminal its an even greater nightmare. But no big deal
> I did figure it out
>
> I need to have
> mouseport=ps2
> vgasize=1024x768x16
> aux/mouse $mouseport
> fork; aux/realemu; aux/vga -m visa -l $vgasize # wow really who came up with that
> #####and I need
> bind -a ‘#i’ /dev
> ####then
> exec rio -i riostart
>
> Now I have a GUI that comes up after reboot as cpu/auth
>
> I swear auth/keyfs and auth/factotum were mounted or started in that cpurc file
>
> For the love of God why do I have to type it in again.
>
> Why when I drawterm from another OS it doesn’t seem to really make a difference and I have to type auth/keyfs or auth/factotum or whatever.
>
> I do check log files. Sometimes they are helpful. Like incorrect this or incorrect that but then sometimes it reads a tls message has been sent at such and such time. But no mail was actually sent. OMG
>
> Lastly I’m super confused on persisting. It seems wasteful to run the commands in some mounted area and re-echo the same commands again. There should be a way to pull in or merge from existing /factotucm/ctl
>
> Clarity would be nice
>
> Damn. I hate asking for Pink Ponies.
>