On Fri, 12 Nov 2021, Martin McCormick via Exim-users wrote:
> I currently use my ISP's email gateway as a smarthost so exim4 is
> configured this way which is how you are able to read this
> message.
>
> I authenticate using a secret password and ssl which all
> works right now but I found out I can also use the mailhost from
> the employer I retired from which might have some advantages as
> far as stability goes.
>
> They sent me a link for how to install thunderbird which
> I don't want, on a Linux system, but they told me that one must
> set thunderbird to use oauth2 for authentication which makes my
> question boils down to: Can exim4 do this?
Not currently.
Mutt and alpine can, although I have never used them to *send*
oauth authenticated mail.
There are also patches for fetchmail.
Your exim is already authenticating to send email, so it isn't
a big change as a user to move to oauth2
but there are some hoops you would have to go through that don't
really fit into mail from a machine, ad opposed to a user.
I have watched oauth2 being implmented for alpine so can dig up
specs and other pointers for anyone wanting to add this to exim,
One particular hurdle is that exim as an app would need to be
registered with google to use a gmail smarthost.
Also, I understand that the token that replaces the password
is renewed/updated over https.
I know that the exim developers are reluctant to add https support to exim,
though it may be possible to renew the token with a helper program.
> At least we are down to the name of some authentication
> process which gets the mta talking to the smarthost.
>
> Thanks for any good ideas.
>
> Martin McCormick
>
--
Andrew C. Aitchison Kendal, UK
andrew@???
