Mbsync, XOAUTH2, and Gmail

[ben lamothe]

Hi. I'm trying to sync my gmail account locally with mbsync. Gmail recently
rolled out an XOAUTH2 based authentication scheme, and they've required it
by default. I have been having trouble configuring mbsync to connect to
gmail with oauth.

I've noticed from the mbsync man page that mbsync has sasl support, and I
also understand that XOAUTH2 is a valid sasl auth mechanism, but I am
unclear how to configure mbsync to make use of that mechanism through sasl.
I can't find any documentation or guides about how to set this up with
mbsync specifically.

I understand that I can enable the "less secure apps" setting in gmail, but
I would rather not do that if it's at all possible because using revokeable
oauth tokens is more secure than using the raw passwords.

How do I configure mbsync to connect to gmail using oauth tokens instead of
a password?

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

Post by ben lamothe
I've noticed from the mbsync man page that mbsync has sasl support, and I
also understand that XOAUTH2 is a valid sasl auth mechanism, but I am
unclear how to configure mbsync to make use of that mechanism through sasl.
I can't find any documentation or guides about how to set this up with
mbsync specifically.

AuthMech XOAUTH2

there are at least two plugins availbable:
https://github.com/sweetums/SASL-OAuth
https://github.com/robn/sasl2-oauth

however, i never tried myself, and it may very well not work.

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

Post by Oswald Buddenhagen

Post by ben lamothe
I've noticed from the mbsync man page that mbsync has sasl support, and I
also understand that XOAUTH2 is a valid sasl auth mechanism, but I am
unclear how to configure mbsync to make use of that mechanism through sasl.
I can't find any documentation or guides about how to set this up with
mbsync specifically.

AuthMech XOAUTH2
https://github.com/sweetums/SASL-OAuth
https://github.com/robn/sasl2-oauth
however, i never tried myself, and it may very well not work.

i looked into this somewhat. while i see no fundamental reason why it
would not work, xoauth is a really bad match for a command line
application. the manual work involved in setting it up is prohibitive,
and i see no reason why anyone would do that.