Last updated on Monday 20th of February 2023 02:25:58 PM

Google Application Passwords

Use a GMail account with XSIBackup or any other application

App until very recently you could use a GMail account along with ©XSIBackup by enabling a feature called Less Secure Passwords. This feature has been deprecated as of May 2022, thus if you were using your GMail account to send your e-mail reports with ©XSIBackup, it has most probably stopped working.

App Password feature entry
2-step Verification and App Password features as seen in your Google Account menu

Google has superseded this old feature by a new one called App Passwords. For this feature to work you need to have previously enabled 2-step Verification. Both of these features are present in the security profile of your Google Account.

You can generate multiple App Passwords for any external application. Choose from the two fold-down menus: Select app and Select device.

In the first one (Select app), choose GMail. For the latter one (Select device), just choose Other (Custom name) and enter XSIBackup or whatever other application you want to configure to use your GMail account with.

Add an App Password
Adding a new App Password

An App Password is 16 chars in length and is automatically generated, you can't set it on your own. Once it has been generated you will see it on screen, you can then copy the characters and use it in your smtpsrvs.conf file. Please, note that the password view organizes the characters in groups of 4, there isn't any interstitial space in it the password is the string of characters without any space on it.

App Password view
Getting the App password

Add the password to your smtpsrvs.conf file and test the server using the --smtp-test argument, the e-mail submission should succeed.