Re: The struggle to use Gnus on Verizon

[Tim McNamara]

Joe Fineman <joe_f@verizon.net> writes:

> I recently switched from a dial-up ISP account at "The World"
> (Software Tool & Die) to a broadband Verizon account.  Since I use
> Gnu Emacs in conjunction with news and mail reader Gnus, I needed to
> edit my ~/.emacs file to reflect the new ISP's news server, incoming
> (POP3) mail and outgoing (SMTP) mail servers.

Not at all unusual in this day and age, as ISPs try to shut off
exploitable routes for spammers to distribute UCE.

Which platform are you running Emacs/Gnus on?  If a Unix-compatible
OS, then you might be able to use the standard .authinfo file, which
you'd create in your home directory.  My ISP requires authentication
for reading and sending news, and Gnus uses mu .authinfo file.  I
will have to do this for my POP account soon, too.  The syntax
appears to be:

machine servername login username password yourpassword

so my .authinfo will look like this, eventually (well, with the
exception of not having munged the server names, my username and my
password...):

machine nntp.isp.com login timmcn password xxxxxxxxx
machine pop.isp.com login timmcn password xxxxxxxxx
machine smtp.isp.com login timmcn password xxxxxxxx
machine localhost login timmcn password xxxxxxxxx

Hope this helps!