Libsecret question

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1

Hi everyone,

I have finished setting up the latest version of SilverBlue and everything so far is better than expected.

I am running Mailspring, and what happens is that everytime I power up the computer and open Mailspring, I have to re-enter the password for my email account.

When reading through the Troubleshooting, it mentions that Libsecret is needed.

Would I be able to get assistance in regards to setting this up please.

Thank you in advance,
Michael

2

Hi, how did you install Mailspring? Was it installed from the Software Center (via Flatpak) or directly from the Mailspring website?
Additionally, there has been a previous discussion about Mailspring and libsecret which might be relevant. You can find it here: Mailspring not working

3

Hi Yuntao,

I installed it using Software Centre.

Thank you for your support.

4

Unfortunately, it appears that Mailspring’s password storage is currently broken on flatpak Mailspring. The suggested fix, according to the Mailspring Community: Password Management Error discussion, is to roll back to a previous version. I have tested version 1.11.0 and can confirm that it works.

Below is the fix mentioned in their forum (If you’re not comfortable using the terminal, you can use a GUI tool Warehouse on Flathub instead.):

To fix this, I did the following:

  1. list all Flatpak versions of the Mailspring app available:
flatpak remote-info --log flathub com.getmailspring.Mailspring
  1. Pick the version you want to downgrade to, in my case the following commit (v. 1.10.7):
flatpak update --commit=1efcb0434736d5248718166ed235b551bc6b513d14163b61950abf8213a5a894 com.getmailspring.Mailspring
  1. Clean up the old Flatpak files (make sure Mailspring is closed!)
cd ~/.var/app/
rm -rf com.getmailspring.Mailspring/
  1. Start Mailspring and the wizard should now come up. Connect your accounts.

Warning:
I found that connecting my Gmail accounts takes ages after I login. You have to wait at least 5 minutes after authorizing Mailspring before it actually adds your accounts. Just leave your browser window open until the Mailspring window closes and your account is added.
Also, I found that I had to add my Gmail accounts twice. After adding them, I immediately got an error that it couldn’t connect. If I then reconnect and authorize again, the accounts work.
Maybe this is something specific to version 1.10.7.

EDIT:
Forgot to add, if you want to prevent Flatpak from updating the package, you can do so by doing this:

  1. List all the Flatpak apps
flatpak list
  1. Copy the name of the Flatpak ID, in this case
com.getmailspring.Mailspring
  1. If you’re on PopOS like me, Flatpak is set up in user mode. Masking the package needs to be done like this:
flatpak mask --user com.getmailspring.Mailspring

Other distro’s sometimes don’t have to use --user, but instead just the App ID.

  1. You can list all masked packages with:
(sudo) flatpak mask

Depending on your distro, you might have to use sudo and --user to successfully mask the Flatpak package. I found in the past that the Pop!_Shop, which is a GUI frontend for the APT and Flatpak package managers, would sometimes continue to try and update masked packages. That is why I mention using --user and sudo here to prevent more unnecessary head scratching and troubleshooting.

  1. The final step, test if flatpak wants to update the package by running:
flatpak update

Mailspring, alongside all other masked apps, should no longer show up in this list and are now excluded from being updated.

5

Many thanks for this.

That is quite a answer, and I have to say thank you again for providing a detailed answer to fix this issue.

I will have a try on it in the next day or so. And at the same time, I will advise Mailspring of this issue.