[GTALUG] Fetchmail and Office365 and backslashes, oh my!

[Peter King]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2018 at 07:59:02PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
 
> | Recently we were forcibly "migrated" to Office365 for our email services,
> 
> Interesting.
> 
> I take it that this is per department.  I just checked on email to my CS 
> email account and it is only touched by Postfix and EXIM servers.

It might be by broader area -- Arts and Science, for instance.  It may get
you yet.  The University has been filled with proud pronouncements about
its email+ system (which is code for Office365).

> What's an alias in this context?  Is it like what newaliases(1)
> maintains for PostFix or Sendmail?

Near as I can tell, it's what the MS techies call a "shared email account",
that is, a non-personal email account that isn't tied to a single person.
In my case it's an email account associated with a departmental role (such
as chair or undergraduate advisor).

> I don't see \ used in this way in the fetchmail manual.  I don't think
> it is what they call multidrop.  Is it part of the IMAP protocol?
> Where is it documented?

It isn't, at least not in the man page.  In fact it's worse: fetchmail
seems to reserve '\' as a special character, usually to introduce some
ASCII code.  I've tried replacing the backslash with the ASCII code for
the backslash following fetchmail's rules, but no go.

> How about two different user lines:
> 
>     poll whatever.utoronto.ca
> 	    user "prof.bozo at utoronto.ca"  there with password "XYZZY" is bozo here
> 
>     poll whatever.utoronto.ca
> 	    user "department.chair at utoronto.ca"  there with password "XYZZY" is bozo here
> 
> or even:
> 
>     poll whatever.utoronto.ca
> 	    user "prof.bozo at utoronto.ca"  there with password "XYZZY" is bozo here
> 	    user "department.chair at utoronto.ca"  there with password "XYZZY" is bozo here

Interesting!  I'll try it.

> PS: I've heard recommentations for getmail over fetchmail.  I haven't
> needed to investigate.

I know nothing about getmail, but I'll look into it.  Fetchmail has served
me faithfully and well for decades, and I'm used to it; if needed I'll move
to something else -- but since it has worked so well for so long, and also
continues to work well with all my other email accounts, I'm reluctant to
change my habits to accommodate MS Office365.  I will if that's what it
takes, though.

> The sendmail manual seems to say that \ is just a way to denote tricky
> characters.  So I think you expect your meaning of \ to be handled by
> the IMAP server.  And that the old IMAP server did handle it.

Yes to both.  It may well be that the problem is not in fetchmail at all
but in how Office365 interprets the string.  I am told that people who
use other clients (Thunderbird etc.) have no trouble with the backslash
addressing, though, so it's still unclear where the problem lies.

All this would be much easier if the IT staff were interested in helping.
As it stands, they intone the mantra that if you use *NIX you're on your
own, and clearly don't know or don't care about the technical details.
Such is the penalty for not swimming with the rest of the fish.

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king at utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto		   (416)-978-3311 dept
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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