simon.schönbeck.dk

Tag: mail

  • Firefox not opening mailto links in Flatpak Thunderbird

    Using Fedora Kinoite Thunderbird comes in a Flatpak. This caused me issues with mailto links in Firefox not opening Thunderbird’s new email window.

    Usually just setting Thunderbird as the default email client inside Thunderbird’s settings or KDE’s default applications would have worked. Even selecting Thunderbird inside the Firefox file handler applications settings would have done the job. However mailto links did nothing but open up the application selector in Firefox which did not work.

    The first two places were already set correctly (in Thunderbird and KDE) so not much more to do there. As I cannot directly select Thunderbird’s binary since it is a Flatpak, I tried to get Firefox to open the Flatpak binary instead and somehow customise the command being run.

    There was just no way to customise the command through its interface, unless I fiddled with handlers.json directly in my Firefox profile directory. I tried a few combinations and no dice. I was also still reluctant to believe that all other users would go through this mess just to get mailto links working which is such a basic feature.

    The most annoying part was that XDG actually returned Thunderbird as the default handler for mailto links:

    $ xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/mailto
    org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop

    But checking my ~/.config/mimeapps.list file revealed that there was no mailto handler defined. Adding the corresponding entries finally fixed the issue:

    [Added Associations]
    x-scheme-handler/mailto=org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop;

    [Default Applications]
    x-scheme-handler/mailto=org.mozilla.Thunderbird.desktop;

    Glad that I got it working but still not satisfied that this was really the way to go, so I decided to start from scratch.

    I went back to KDE’s System Settings>Apps & Windows>Default Applications>Email client. Despite having Thunderbird already selected I went and selected Other… instead. Here I could select Thunderbird again but interestingly there were more options:

    You will notice in my screen-shot the check-box stating “Remember application association for all files of type “x-scheme-handler/mailto“. This check-box once checked actually updates the same ~/.config/mimeapps.list file with the previous entries I mentioned earlier.

    So apparently this is an option which is not enabled by default when just selecting Thunderbird in the default applications list. Why not having mailto links working by default in KDE is a conundrum.

    I am sure there are edge cases not wanting mailto links to open the default email client, but I would assume the vast majority of users expect this behaviour of the default email client. What is the point otherwise of selecting a default application?

  • Post comment notification email woes

    After having done an upgrade of a very old WordPress install, notification emails were not arriving properly.

    Since this installation was originally set up almost two decades ago, back when emails were sent directly from the same hosting server to the MTA. Due to the level of spam this caused, emails nowadays have to be submitted through a proper mail system, not forgetting the fact that port 25 is now blocked at nearly all providers.

    I do run some mail servers myself, however I wanted something quick to move on so I decided to use Mailgun which I had an account with already. They actually provide their own Mailgun WordPress plugin so I was up and running as soon as the new DNS records had propagated. Emails started arriving immediately when I updated the Administration Email Address under Settings>General with the new email address. Great stuff!

    However I realised that a new comment would no longer trigger the comment notification email. Nothing in the logs of nginx revealed what could be happening. I needed to figure out if the emails were even generated, and if so, where did they get stuck.

    Luckily there is another plugin which logs each email sent by WordPress. Once I tested another comment and checked the plugin’s log page in WordPress, I immediately realised what the issue was. It was still being sent to the old administrator email address!

    Later I did spot that Mailgun’s own logs actually revealed the same data, but at the time in question I was under the impression that the emails never left WordPress.

    Now the mystery… why the heck was WordPress still using the previous email address from Administration Email Address? This field was updated and other admin notification emails were being received just fine.

    The issue when dealing with a self-hosted WordPress for oneself is that in the vast majority of cases, one is both the site administrator as well as the only user posting. Apparently the new comment notifications emails are only sent to the post author and not the site administrator. I had simply forgotten about the old email address under the posting user’s profile (Users>Profile)!

    Comment moderation emails on the contrary do go to both site administrator and post author.

    Do not forget to add or update your Gravatar profile with the new email address.

  • Gmail à la Mailinator

    As you probably are aware of Mailinator is a fantastic useful service which allows you to use any email address on the fly when needed. Simply make a random one up e.g. like CoolService@Mailinator.com and start using it without previous registration.

    This is great for registering on websites where you really only want to get in once and perhaps do not want to visit ever again, but still are forced to validate your email address. It may also be useful for sites which you do not trust sufficiently to provide them with your real email address at the risk of being spammed.

    Mailinator also started supporting alternate domains (even alternate inbox names) instead of mailinator.com since some websites started blocking registrations using it. The fact that you have to work around such nuisance before using a site obviously shows that something is not right on the site, but that is for another post…

    Today, while reading about importing a GEDCOM file into my genealogical tree at Geni, I stumbled on this little Gmail trick which I tried and it worked flawlessly.

    Apparently you can add a “.” (dot) somewhere within your Gmail username, or even append a “+” (plus) along with additional characters, and it will all reach your inbox. A few examples will make it more clear. Let us suppose that your email address is RickDangerous@Gmail.com:

    • Rick.Dangerous@Gmail.com
    • Ri.ckDangerous@Gmail.com
    • RickDangerous+IsCool@Gmail.com

    In the above cases all recipients would be valid and emails sent to any of them will be received by the same person, namely the owner of RickDangerous@Gmail.com.

    This is not exactly Mailinator but it allows you to use different email addresses but without the hassle of having to set them up beforehand. As an additional benefit those emails received will be kept totally private in your inbox versus Mailinator where anyone that knows the email address will be able to read them.

  • Thunderbird + Gmail = invalid username and password

    I have been using Gmail accounts inside Thunderbird for some time and every now and then I received those annonying error messages stating that the username or password was invalid. This was somehow a conundrum as the passwords were saved within the Thunderbird profile and had not changed.

    Looking up the issue today I came across both the problem, the trigger, and the solution. I realised that Gmail does not let you check for mailbox changes more often than every 10 minutes. Thunderbird was set to check for new mail every 6 minutes which seems to have triggered the account to be locked out. First when the Captcha had been passed the email account was again available via IMAP.