Totally agree.
Its egregious and outrageous that HostGator behaves as it does.
I understand that Hostgator is mostly to blame here.
I also understand that technically, the email client app is not notified of the dropped email.
However, the developer has been informed of the issue, and a fix (allowing users to revert back to an alternate delivery method) should not be that hard to implement.
The developer could help a lot of people by modifying/improving their app to deal with the reality of the situation, rather than simply washing their hands of the matter.
Do/can you trust an MSP that trashes its (authenticated) user’s messages, without notification? Getting a message past Hostgator’s first filter is no guarantee that they won’t trash it at some later stage, still without notification. If they were my MSP I’d be looking for a provider that comes closer to following best current practices.
3 Likes
So my hosting is up for renewal…BlueHost…and I’m not going to spent money on hosting that doesn’t work with K-9 and more importantly the strict mail send rules.
I don’t need web hosting.
I don’t want Google.
I need two IMAP accounts between two domains and I’d like to have around a gig of mail space JIC.
Anyone recommend a host?
-Mac
Hello everyone. I am new on this forum. I hope that what I write is correct and acceptable.
I have this problem with my Bluehost MSP with 6.200 K9 version. I solved as suggested from @
dejab and @cketti.
I did following modifications in SmtpTransport.kt
private fun buildHostnameToReport(): String {
val localAddress = socket!!.localAddress
// We use local IP statically for privacy reasons, see https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/pull/3798
return if (localAddress is Inet6Address) {
"[IPv6:::1]"
} else {
"[192.168.1.199]"
}
}
and now I can send my emails.
Is it possible that this simple change could enter the official application?
2 Likes
I am also curious if it is possible to adjust this in a setting withing K–9 Mail?
I’m using Thunderbird and recently switched to Android. I heard that k-9 mail is open source and in some partnership with Thunderbird so I was eager to try it, but after a few frustrating hours it seems like k-9 doesn’t want me if I use HostGator. As a long time HostGator user I can attest they’re quality has gone down over the years, so I’m not defending them, but my emails seem to work fine with most other email apps. Guess I’ll be going with Google for now. That was a really bad firt impression k-9, yet somehow I’m still rooting for you. So I figured I’d post.
So I’ve been living with this problem and simply sending mail from my business email only from my desktop for a really long time now. It’s inconvenient, but so are the alternative android mail clients. I’m using bluehost, and I’m not eager to change providers, but neither am I eager to change mail clients. I like K9, and the fact that its devs are so devoted to having their preferred setting be not just the default behavior, but the only one possible because the menu option to change it was removed, seems to me to be unreasonable in light of what is now known.
I agree that the way you prefer the program to operate is a good way, and that my mail server is configured stupidly. However, we know now that these servers are out there, and they’re not going to change things for us. You the devs need to face that reality and be pragmatic about this. People need to send mail, and numerous people have resorted to gEvil and other clients to do so. Is that really a greater good than simply restoring the checkbox under privacy settings which allowed the use of the prior behavior when a badly configured server needs it to function so people can continue using the FOSS client we all love so much? When the change was made initially, I’m sure you never suspected that it would wreak havoc on so many people’s sending, since it is a standards-compliant method, but to not make any allowances on this now that a year and a half later people are still having the issue feels like spite.
We all wish that things in the world were otherwise than we find them, but most of the time we must simply adapt to the way we find things because we cannot change them. This is one of those situations. Please accept the reality that these servers are not going to change, and allow your otherwise excellent client to adapt and work with them. I like it so much better than any other option that I’ve lived with the problem for ages in hope it will be resolved. Please don’t let my hope, and the hope of so many others, be in vain.
2 Likes
Hi,
Inderd it is very right to try and follow the international guidelines, but what is to be done practically when those are a bit too theoretical or even at worse a misfit to real life situations, and can not themselves be easily amended or revised?
Yours is a very considered response, and well expresses the situation for an enormous number of people.
We ourselves have practically no choice, for many administrative reasons nothing to do with email, other than to be on one of the internet’s very large hosts that we are on, and they have delicately explained to us the bind they are in as well over this, which is not as simple or black and white as some might have made the matter out to be.
Like you we couldn’t find anything open source that matches even older versions of K9, and are consequently on an older fork of K9, where the developer, Deepen Dhulla, has presently assured us that he would not be of a mind to disable the sending mechanism—as has happened to recent K9 versions.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deependhulla.opemail
“How to make Open Source deployment successful in meeting the business and IT needs of any organization" is what I keep working on - Deepen Dhulla”
Regrettably Deepen is not in a position presently to be able to maintain his fork, and so we often wonder if we are becoming vulnerable to any security issues, there being no update available for ‘Open Mail’ which we are currently using.
I too do hope that soon a more publicly minded heart might develop within the K9 core developer corporate culture over all of this,
Kindest regards,
Paul
1 Like
There is only one developer, namely @cketti.
If you find someone willing to invest the time and effort, you can backport some of the newer bugfixes to the older codebase.
The other way round, you can try to import deprecated code into the newer code. I did this for a while with the IP settings… However, it is just too much effort without any reward.
People tend to demand stuff. Then try say that anybody can implement stuff. However, they are not willing to pay for a developer. Thus, if they haven’t given up, they try it themselves. Only very few keep up with their own fork, so most give up after a while.
This is all a crock. The notion that K9 should forego its standards to accommodate non compliant MSP’s is laughable. Get a grip plse.
1 Like
That’s absurd to say. The issue is not that there is no way to accommodate the MSP without going outside the standards, and there are many, but that the preference of the developer, which is within the standard but unacceptable to some MSPs, is absolute and he so far has refused to make allowances for them, choosing it as the hill on which some of our usability must die in his fight for absolute adherence to standards. To me this is an unwinnable fight for which he is making unnecessary sacrifices, but it is his program and he can do what he likes.
I may go back to 5.6 at some point, but there are things I will miss from the later versions, so I hope he decides to be accommodating soon.
Edit: The preview doesn’t show it but he dumped K9 and went to M$ Outlook. He’s using Bluehost.
I’m sure with a little looking we could find dozens of scenarios like this, and each may represent thousands who had the problem and did the same thing but didn’t report so. Again I ask the question…is the greater good really being served by this ideological purity fight? It doesn’t look like it to me.
Seems developer could easily make a pay version with the alternate code.
Charge a buck or two for it. Make a few hundred or a few thousan bucks.
Everybody wins.
I’m sure this isn’t about difficulty, as the option to choose between the previous behavior or the currently preferred behavior existed initially but was dropped, presumably to force the issue in his ongoing quest to force MSPs to adhere fully to published standards, which state that email sent his preferred way should be acceptable.
This kind of thing is not new. M$ did it with the constant UAC prompts added in Vista to annoy customers into annoying software vendors to adhere to published standards, which stated that software for Windows should not need administrative access to the machine to perform daily work. Up until Vista, nothing enforced that, and since most accounts had unrestricted admin access all the time, there were few problems caused by deviating from it, so vendors largely ignored it. M$ was successful both in causing huge disruptions to their user base and also in getting the software industry to write better code, allowing for much better overall security.
The issue here is that K9 is not Windows, and its dev is not M$. His campaign is not going to accomplish anything beyond ensuring that a segment of the potential user base is permanently unable to use his product, and that’s a crying shame, because it’s otherwise the very best that there is, IMO.
1 Like
These bugs have cost me money, time, and almost cost me my job. And yes, it’s two bugs. One in the host, and one in K-9. I get that there is a battle going on over standards, but if a pedestrian gets hit in the crosswalk, he’s just as dead – the fact that he had the right of way doesn’t matter.
Absolutely right that hostgator should notify a user if the email was dropped. Likewise, K-9 could also show a notification that the email may have issues because the server is hostgator. Both have chosen to “stand on principle, screw the user.”
I have to find another email client now, and then another email host before my subscription expires. I find i can no longer trust either. Can anyone suggest a good client that won’t harvest my data?
Once you move your email away from Newfold Digital/EIG, you won’t need a new email client.
Thanks, I know. But I’ve lost faith at this point that either side really cares about whether I get my email or not. I understand that K-9 developers owe me nothing. I’ve been using the client free for years and I got everything I paid for. HostGator does owe me service because I paid them, but it appears that others have tried and failed to get them to change.
I also really would vote for some option to enable workaround on K9 for the issue some mail providers have. Having a warning based on some known server names would also help K9 users to identify issues quickly.