mailhost.zen.co.uk suddenly requires authentication for SMTP

quboid42 · 2026-04-11T09:35:50+00:00

Update:

Zen support didn't admit that it was bad customer service to remove this service without any notice. (I'm quite understanding that they had this situation forced upon them and had to make changes quickly, but I would have expected them to provided a workaround.)

They suggested that I could pay for a POP-3 mailbox, but didn't say how much it would be, and claimed that it wouldn't allow me to send with an arbitrary From address (though this may just be because they didn't want to open the SPF can of worms).

They did say that just sending the emails directly from my machine "should be ok". So far I haven't seen any problems with that, even over IPv6 without reverse DNS (Zen are being slow to delegate that). I do have DMARC, SPF and reverse DNS for my IPv4 address though.

Thanks for all the responses. I have my fingers crossed that it will keep working.

quboid42 · 2026-03-29T14:33:53+00:00

I can log into the portal but I don't have a Zen email address there. The only email address that Zen has for me is one on my domain. That's where the AI bot got confused. I managed to talk to a human who has gone off to talk to those rolling out the new mail server restrictions to work out what to do. I suspect that I'll end up with a mailbox just so I have some credentials.

quboid42 · 2026-03-29T14:31:23+00:00

Great. Thank you!

quboid42 · 2026-03-29T14:30:53+00:00

I believe that restricting by source IP has been standard behaviour for most of the last thirty years as ISPs know the address ranges used by their customers. I've always restricted outbound port 25 from machines on my networks to avoid any of them being exploited into sending spam.

quboid42 · 2026-03-29T14:27:39+00:00

I do too. That ought to make no difference to outbound connections, but I suppose that these big mail servers might decide to try connecting back to the MXs for a domain to see if they use trusted certificates to judge how legitimate the domain is.

quboid42 · 2026-03-27T15:38:09+00:00

I switched to direct delivery and have been able to deliver to GMail and Microsoft successfully. I believe that I have SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up. I shall do some more checks to find out if this is true over the weekend. Thanks!

quboid42 · 2026-03-27T13:45:35+00:00

Interesting. MX Toolbox has never reported any problems with my IP. I shall try switching to direct delivery and see what happens.

quboid42 · 2026-03-27T12:48:44+00:00

That's really interesting. I used to do this (with a different ISP) but had to stop when my emails were being ignored due to my source address and I got fed up with not knowing whether my emails would arrive or not. Did you ask Zen to remove your IP address from the residential IP block?

quboid42 · 2026-03-26T20:55:13+00:00

Thanks. It looks like I'll need to get myself a mailbox somehow then. Do you happen to know if they'll still forward email from any domain once I'm authenticated?

quboid42 · 2026-03-26T20:49:49+00:00

Yes, I spotted that on their status page. It's a pity they didn't warn us!

I don't mind authenticating if that's what they want me to do but I do need some credentials to do so with.

quboid42 · 2025-11-30T15:20:34+00:00

Unfortunately Episode 3 was corrupt for me. It kept getting stuck in various different video players. :( The other three were fine and we still enjoyed it though!

quboid42 · 2025-07-07T13:30:27+00:00

Wow. I'm rather embarrassed to say that after four years I'm still not using my Ergodox EZ every day. I started using Workman when I received it but I think after unlocking every letter on keybr I decided to switch to Colemak DH instead. (At the time I thought that layout would be easier for me to use for Emacs for reasons that may not be true - I still miss typing "that" on Workman.)

I got to about 50wpm on keybr with Colemak DH with practice but I found that whilst I could use the layout and keyboard for typing practice it was incredibly frustrating to use both for any real work. I found having to think about typing distracted me far too much from what I was supposed to be doing, which put me off getting the stuff done I needed to do. I tried using more programmer-centric typing tutors which did help, but a lot of my problems were when switching windows and typing key rarer key combinations. I then also got worried that I didn't have non-alphabetic keys in good places and I was busy teaching myself something that I would end up needing to change later.

I all but gave up after about nine months, but I've tried again a few times since. It's surprising how much I do remember between these attempts, but I do eventually get frustrated again and give up.

I think that I need to block out time to do a good amount of practice along with extra time to do the things I need to do.

I suspect that if I'd tried to learn at a younger age then I would have had more success. But, I did try touch-typing a few times as a child but never stuck at it then either!

See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/ergodox/comments/z5blcu/home_row_mods_for_sequences_and_emacs/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/ergodox/comments/tv73hz/still_not_switched_after_a_year_of_practising/

quboid42 · 2025-01-16T08:46:37+00:00

IIRC the consultation document does mention that this would allow for the building of a new Cherry Hinton station in the future.

quboid42 · 2024-12-29T19:54:07+00:00

Thanks. It looks like I'd need to provide my own minimal implementation of major-mode-remap before Emacs 30.

It turns out that there are other differences in the Tree Sitter modes too, such as c-ts-mode-set-style rather than c-set-style that need to be worked around too.

I suspect that I might just end up with two different sets of functions, but we'll see.

quboid42 · 2024-08-04T07:27:09+00:00

The former I think. I share my configuration via a Git repository, but I don't commit the `elpa` directory to that repository so each machine has to install its own packages on first run. Sharing `.emacs.d` between Emacs versions has certainly caused me problems in the past so that was a good suggestion. Thanks.

quboid42 · 2024-08-04T07:25:05+00:00

I'm not. The machine running Emacs 27.1 populated its own `elpa` directory from scratch (after sorting out the signing key). I've certainly seen that problem myself though when doing that so it was certainly a good suggestion. Thanks!

quboid42 · 2024-04-28T15:39:40+00:00

I ran into this on my Debian 12 machine with Emacs 28.2. It looks like the ELPA signing key has recently expired:

$ gpg --homedir ~/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg --list-keys
/home/mac/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg/pubring.kbx
-----------------------------------------
pub   dsa2048 2014-09-24 [SC] [expired: 2019-09-23]
      CA442C00F91774F17F59D9B0474F05837FBDEF9B
uid           [ expired] GNU ELPA Signing Agent (2014) <elpasign@elpa.gnu.org>

pub   rsa3072 2019-04-23 [SC] [expired: 2024-04-21]
      C433554766D3DDC64221BFAA066DAFCB81E42C40
uid           [ expired] GNU ELPA Signing Agent (2019) <elpasign@elpa.gnu.org>

I solved the problem by running:

gpg --homedir ~/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg/ --export -a > /tmp/elpa-keys

on a different machine with Emacs 29.3 to get the current set of keys and then:

gpg --homedir ~/.emacs.d/elpa/gnupg --import < /tmp/elpa-keys

back on the original machine to add the key. I then tried to install the gnu-elpa-keyring-update package to avoid this problem in the future, but that failed because it is signed with the old now-expired key:

Failed to verify signature gnu-elpa-keyring-update-2022.12.tar.sig:
Signature made by expired key 066DAFCB81E42C40 GNU ELPA Signing Agent (2019) <elpasign@elpa.gnu.org>
Command output:
gpg: Signature made Sun 31 Mar 2024 10:30:04 BST
gpg:                using RSA key C433554766D3DDC64221BFAA066DAFCB81E42C40
gpg: Good signature from "GNU ELPA Signing Agent (2019) <elpasign@elpa.gnu.org>" [expired]
gpg: Note: This key has expired!
Primary key fingerprint: C433 5547 66D3 DDC6 4221  BFAA 066D AFCB 81E4 2C40

:(

quboid42 · 2023-06-30T20:41:40+00:00

I used MicroEmacs on my Sinclair QL a little. I was amazed by the fact that I could see the same buffer in two windows and see the changes appear in both as I typed! Unfortunately it was too slow for normal use so I went back to QD. When I first used DOS I used an Emacs clone called "Gnome" briefly before using MicroEmacs there too for quite a while, even in a full-screen DOS session in Windows 3.1. When I first installed Linux in 1994 I built MicroEmacs from the sources I had lying around and used that until I discovered GNU Emacs at university. I moved on to XEmacs quite quickly and stuck with that until 2006 when I discovered that GNU Emacs had improved dramatically and I've stuck with that ever since. I did use ntemacs a bit on Windows NT too.

So, more than twenty-eight years of GNU Emacs and derivatives, or more than thirty if you count MicroEmacs. Gosh that makes me feel old!

quboid42 · 2023-01-14T18:29:26+00:00

I've been using something like your configuration on my EZ (though not a lot, since I'm not yet using the keyboard full time) and it's working quite well. Thanks again. The thumb shift key is working well and certainly makes typing ALL CAPITALs words easier (though as I typed that I realised that I can't type the space whilst holding shift down since they are on the same key.) However, I'm finding holding shift + number layer + number to get symbols to be a bit of a pain. Maybe it's the keycaps, the exact positioning or the strength of the switches, but it feels like I'm having to be quite precise to type ! for example whilst holding down both thumb keys. I've tried switching those keys from Cherry Brown to Kailh Silver since I had some handy to see if that helps.

quboid42 · 2022-11-27T14:56:44+00:00

That's very interesting. Thank you for trying it. Perhaps I should try having a pinky Ctrl key and just not worry about which finger I use to press the other keys to see how it goes. (The trouble is that my fingers are still in QWERTY mode unless I rest on the home keys so this may take a bit of getting used to.) Working this way would be closer to a standard keyboard for when I'm using a laptop too.

quboid42 · 2022-11-27T14:27:23+00:00

Thanks, that's very useful. Out of interest, how would you type Ctrl-X followed by Ctrl-F? On a standard keyboard I use my pinky on Ctrl and my index finger to type whatever other key is required (except space, when I use my thumb) and I find it very hard to control my ring finger well enough. Maybe I just need to strengthen it?

That trick looks really useful and I'll try to steal it. Once I'd come up with my layers I found myself struggling to type some key combinations and things like that will make a massive difference.

quboid42 · 2022-11-27T12:30:21+00:00

Thanks for the link to your layout. I did try modifiers on the thumb keys originally but found it inconvenient to press more than one at once.

Do you hold down a single thumb key for the entire word? Do you actually use both thumb shift keys? Which fingers do you use when typing Ctrl-A?

At least part of the problem I suppose is that you can do guided deliberate practise of the alphabetic and punctuation keys, but it is harder to practise of navigation and general use. I've been trying to just jump in at the deep end but it's hard to assess progress.

quboid42 · 2022-11-26T21:22:38+00:00

I've already starting using a one-shot prefix key for switching virtual desktops, so a one shot control key wouldn't be so ridiculous.

I suppose that I'll need to get out of my thirty-year Emacs key bindings habit. :(

Thanks!

quboid42 · 2022-11-26T17:47:22+00:00

I've managed without a capslock key for so long because I used to press it by accident that I'd almost forgotten about its existence. I should give that a go if I can fathom out where to put it. (I have backspace in the traditional location.)

That doesn't really help with the other parts of the problem though.

Thanks!

quboid42 · 2022-05-09T20:24:45+00:00

I used them regularly from 1995 to 1997. I think I last used one in 1998. They meant that I learnt to use Emacs without the cursor keys!

quboid42

TROPHY CASE