Re: weird problem with one mail account in Thunderbird....ISP or what ?
On 05/29/2015 06:04 AM, ken wrote:
On 05/27/2015 09:06 PM, Frank wrote:
This is long so I hope all can read till the end.....
I access all my mail through Thunderbird using IMAP. It has always been
flawless until yesterday.
When I went into Thunderbird at mid-day one of my accounts with my
ISP Videotron.ca registered a logon failure..despite the fact nothing
had changed.
They keep changing my password through their facilities...and
when I run Thunderbird with the new password it connects fine.
But if I close Thunderbird and go back in, the old "cannot logon to
IMAP" is back.
Three separate calls to support at Videotron resulted in them
eventually claiming (on the third call) that my system had been
compromised. I told them that was unlikely as I am not running
Windows. He then spoke with their "security" department who said
it was possible the system had been compromised...that Linux and
Mac are subject to root-kits and "other" viruses.
I have checked (with chkrootkit) and as far as it is concerned,
there is nothing wrong.
The strange thing is this: I have 3 separate mail accounts with
Videotron...but only the main one (which is under my name) is
giving this trouble. This one which I use for this list is fine
as is a second less important account.
It seems I can't convince them the problem is at their end....or
perhaps something else is going on here ?
First, I wouldn't believe at all what they say about your system having
been compromised. They don't know anything at all about linux and
somehow they diagnosed over the phone that you have a virus??? Well,
level one tech support often operates on magical thinking... that's just
my experience over a lot of years.
Someone already mentioned the problem could be with the number of
attempted IMAP connections might exceed what you've configured. I had
this problem once and fixed it somewhere in my thunderbird
configuration. (It was a long time and many versions ago, so even if I
could remember where that configuration item was, it's probably not in
the same place anymore anyway. Poke around for it. The language for
that setting is unambiguous.)
This would be a good moment to have a dual-boot machine, or a VM, with
Windows running on it. Failing those, if you have a smart phone, there
are IMAP-based email apps. It would literally take ten minutes to
download and set up.
//snip//
This is a dual-boot machine with Windows8 ...Debian and Fedora 21.
The same problem shows in Fedora because the Thunderbird config
directory is mounted by Fedora using Bind...so if there were a
config problem it would also appear there.
As an aside I'm almost afraid to boot Windows now :) I haven't booted
into Windows for weeks now
My Smartphone running Android also could not connect to that
account
If your problem still persists, check your network connection. Try
pinging their mail server(s) and a few DNSs. Also the first hop after
your modem. Not very often, but still occasionally, I get a problem
which is resolved by rebooting mine. I'll reboot my switch and my
bridge at the same time just to be thorough and because it takes no
extra time to do so.
I rebooted the modem and the router almost as soon as the problem
appeared.
Then check your log files. If I'm on the clock, I do this first (even
before going to a list for an answer). But a lot of people are put off,
and often rightly so, by the obtuse language found there. But give it a
try anyway. You might need to up the verbosity levels, then try again.
I checked the logs but couldn't see anything of interest there.
Frank
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