[Users] Gmail still driving me crazy

[Jeremy Nicoll]

On Sat, 20 May 2017, at 02:12, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> Claws Mail 3.11.1 from the repositories on Xubuntu 14.04, up to date.
> 
> I have had a Gmail account for many years, and I have been using Claws
> Mail on Linux since Ubuntu Breezy Badger was the latest and greatest
> release (can it really have been that long?). I have always used POP3
> with my Gmail account and lately it has become a major pain. Here is a
> section of the log from a recent attempt to connect:

How long ago did connecting to this account last work properly?


> * Account 'Gmail': Connecting to POP3 server: pop.gmail.com:995...
> [17:26:42] IMAP4> 634 NOOP 
> [17:26:42] IMAP4< 634 OK Success 
> [17:27:42] IMAP4> 635 NOOP 
> [17:27:42] IMAP4< 635 OK Success 
> ** Session timed out. You may be able to recover by increasing the
>   timeout value in Preferences/Other/Miscellaneous. [17:28:42] IMAP4>
>   636 NOOP [17:28:42] IMAP4< 636 OK Success 
> [17:29:42] IMAP4> 637 NOOP 
> [17:29:42] IMAP4< 637 OK Success 
> [17:30:42] IMAP4> 638 NOOP 
> [17:30:42] IMAP4< 638 OK Success 
> [17:31:42] IMAP4> 639 NOOP 
> [17:31:42] IMAP4< 639 OK Success 
> [17:32:42] IMAP4> 640 NOOP 
> [17:32:42] IMAP4< 640 OK Success 
> [17:33:42] IMAP4> 641 NOOP 
> [17:33:42] IMAP4< 641 OK Success 
> [17:34:42] IMAP4> 642 NOOP 
> [17:34:42] IMAP4< 642 OK Success 
> [17:35:42] IMAP4> 643 NOOP 
> [17:35:42] IMAP4< 643 OK Success 
> [17:36:42] IMAP4> 644 NOOP 
> [17:36:42] IMAP4< 644 OK Success 
> [17:37:42] IMAP4> 645 NOOP 
> [17:37:42] IMAP4< 645 OK Success 
> [17:38:42] IMAP4> 646 NOOP 
> [17:38:42] IMAP4< 646 OK Success 
> 
> I have the timeout set to 2 minutes, which is when the Retrieving New
> Messages window disappears, yet strangely, while watching the log
> window new attempts continue (see above, starting at 17:26:42, timeout
> at 17:28:42 (window disappears), and new attempts until 17:38:42). I
> know little about how e-mail works, so I have questions:
> 
> Why does the log show continuing attempts after the timeout is reached?
> 
> What does NOOP mean? 
> 
> Why does it say OK Success when clearly it has not been successful?

A log file like that shows commands that are being sent to a server
somewhere,
and the responses that the server makes to those commands.  I /think/
that
you're seeing Claws sending the "NOOP" command to a Gmail server, and
the 
Gmail server saying "OK" ... as in "OK, I got your command".

NOOP will be "no operation" ie "no op".   This looks to me like Claws
sending 
essentially a dummy command to Gmail once per minute, so that Gmail sees 
that the session with you is still doing something and doesn't
disconnect you.
On the other hand, if that's correct, the fact that you did get
timed-out suggests
that the Gmail server is clever enough not to be tricked this way.

A normal POP3 login would show a server saying something like:

here I am, what do you want to do?

Then your email client saying I'm User such-and-such

Then the server saying, OK, I got that, then your email client saying
here's my password
and the server would acknowledge that, and so on.

The client (Claws) waits after each command it sends for the server to
say that was ok, or
alternatively to send some sort of error message.



> Why does the above log say IMAP4 when the account is set up with POP3?

Maybe Gmail have removed their POP3 service?  Or maybe it's now on a
different
server or a different port?  Do you have it defined as described here:

 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7104828?hl=en



-- 
Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own.