Thoughts on replacing FileMaker Pro 11

Once upon a time database apps were priced and sold as a consumer product. Those were the days when computers were marketed as a replacement for a recipe book.

There were dozens of consumer oriented database products then, priced from under $15 shareware apps to around $100 for relatively full featured commercial products (AppleWorks, etc). Some of these products, particularly on the Mac, were astounding (though high end ones were priced as business products).

That era seems weird now. It definitively ended when Apple discontinued Bento. Shortly afterwords FileMaker was priced as a business-only product. Panorama X has followed a similar path. Tap Forms is sold at a consumer price, but it failed my basic trial tests.

The era of the affordable personal database app has passed. The only commercial remnant on any platform is Microsoft Access — somehow Microsoft can’t quite kill it. LibreOffice Base began as Microsoft Access clone and sort of runs on macOS, but parts of it still require Java.

My only current use case for FileMaker Pro is that it runs my personal password database. I could move that (yay data freedom!) to Microsoft Access in a VM, but Windows 10 is a monstrous amount of baggage to keep around just to run a personal password manager.

I could finally migrate to 1Password. Emily and I use it and I have to periodically dump data into it manually from my old password database. I wonder how long that product will last with Apple incorporating credential management into the operating system though.

Or I could adopt the lazy choice and stay on Sierra and FileMaker Pro 11 a while longer. I like the sound of that one.

Replacing Filemaker Pro 11: Tap Forms fails within minutes of testing

Filemaker 11 is not compatible with High Sierra. I checked out Tap Forms. It failed because …

1. Tap Forms Mac 5.app stores its database files in ~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents. I prefer not to use apps that store data in unorthodox places, it makes backup and restore too difficult. It’s much to easy to lose track of files and uninstall is more complex. This is, however, an Apple design practice — MarsEdit does the same thing.

2. I choose a csv file to import and I renamed the fields in the import dialog as below.

.

After import the fields had the original names.

I found two significant problems in 5 minutes of testing. The first is a design choice I dislike for this type of app. The second is a bug - an obvious bug found on the very first thing I tested.

Tap Forms is not a viable choice for me.

Also, uninstalling is the usual pain — but that’s a longstanding Apple issue.

Google Voice: "We could not complete your call - Please try again."

I’ve been using Google Voice for eons — starting before Google acquired GrandCentral. It saved me thousands on my daily mobile calls to my mother in Canada.

GV must be a real money loser for Google though — the interconnect fees to landlines are a real cost [1]. So it’s not surprising that it’s a bit of a mess — between GV legacy, GV current, Hangouts [2] and heaven knows what else.

Today I tried a GV call from my iPhone and got “We could not complete your call - Please try again.” In my case this is a bug that happened because the GV number associated with the Google ID I was using did not have an associated mobile phone (I’d moved that phone to a different GV account). I think Google Voice.app for iOS used to permit that, but it doesn’t now. To use Google Voice.app now you need to have an associated verified mobile phone with the active GV account.

So I moved my two mobile numbers to the two GV accounts I wanted them on. Now if I try to use Google Voice.app with an account that doesn’t have a verified mobile number it gives me a more appropriate error message (that’s why this was a bug — wrong error message).

I’d be happy if GV would figure a way to make money from me, it is a great service.

- fn -

[1] Funny thing and cautionary tale: In the early 90s we were sure that by the year 2000 voice calls would be so cheap they wouldn’t be worth metering. That was only sort of true. Never underestimate the power of discontinuities.

[2] GV sort-of migrated to Hangouts, but that seems to have stalled and perhaps reversed. Hangouts seems to be dying, caught up in Google’s flailing messaging strategy.

IOT: Switching a Chamberlain MyQ WiFi garage door opener WiFi network

When our garage door opener died our service guy installed a LiftMaster Contractor Series Garage Door Opener. I think it’s an 8155W, 8164W or 8165W.

You can enable smartphone app access to monitor and control the garage door — assuming your home WiFi extends that far. Yeah, it’s Internet of Things (IOT) device.

There are obvious problems with doing enabling wifi access:

• Chamberlain security is probably fairly typical. As in … lousy. Assume whatever credentials you use to setup this account are now public. Also assume that the garage door is accessible by anyone who wants in badly enough.
• Even if there are no known exploits in the device OS (hah-hah) it will never get updated. So there will be exploits eventually.
• It’s made in China. Presumably it comes with a backdoor.
• The standard setup is to connect it to your home network. Which means you are, basically, toast.

On the other hand an additional remote is $50 and you can set alarms if the garage door is open after, say, 10pm.

Our garage is not connected to our home, but our Apple AirPort Extreme does reach it. So, despite the risks, I did an initial experimental connection and installed the LiftMaster.app.

It worked ok, so I enabled the Guest network on my AirPort and decided to switch it over. I couldn’t find documentation on how to switch to this network though.

The web page of an error message did give one way to force it to connect:

MyQ Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener: press and release the round yellow Learn button three times on the opener's motor unit. The motor unit's blue LED will be blinking on and off and the opener will beep once.

It turns out there is documentation in the product manual (available online), it just doesn’t contain the keyword “reset”. Instead it uses “erase”. To erase/reset the WiFi network you need to use the controls on the opener, not the remote. There’s an “up arrow” called an “adjustment button”. Press and hold it until 3 beeps are heard. Then start over with the WiFi. (I ran into some issue and Chrome seemed to work around it, so if Safari doesn’t work for you …)

The garage opener is on my Guest network now, so theoretically isolated from my home network.

Things old persons don't understand -- what happens to all those school Google Docs?

Two of our kids are ending their St Paul Public School careers. Both have a collection of Google Docs.

The school does not seem to provide any mechanism for mass reassignment of document ownership to a personal Google account. From what I can tell the school actually blocks ownership reassignment. (Ownership management is one of the several significant issues with Google’s document sharing infrastructure [1].)

So what do students do with all those documents [2]? Olds like me have no idea. They don’t just let them all evaporate … do they?

(I use CloudPull, one of my favorite macOS apps, to create a local repository. The download process converts Google “docs” to Office files. Of course there’s nothing like this for iOS.)

- fn -

[1] Only owners can truly delete an owned document, and ownership cannot be transferred for non-Google “docs”. I think all own/share privileges are at the document level, but documents may inherit some properties from their folder “container” — but not ownership. Yeah, I don’t understand this. Not sure anyone does :-).
[2] Due to some cognitive disabilities and temperaments my guys can’t answer this question… I guess I should ask my daughter …

Update: of course I just write this and today I get for all my CloudPull accounts: “CloudPull was unable to export your backups”. It turns out CloudPull had lost track of my backup directory. I don’t know why. I relinked in Preferences:Advanced and it worked again. It didn’t write anything to console when that happened. Support was great at helping me fix this.

Update 8/26/2018: I again ran into “CloudPull was unable to export your backups”, this time on my personal (36GB export) gDrive. I cleaned up some other non-active accounts, used Help force reindex, and booted into Recovery mode and ran 1st Aid (it fixed things). Then it worked.

Enabling SPF on Dreamhost accounts

Dreamhost writes about SPF:

SPF overview – DreamHost

… Mail servers that receive an email for delivery can check SPF by comparing the sending server’s IP address against the email's envelope sender's SPF DNS record. If the email was sent from a server that is not included in that SPF record, the email is more likely to be spoofed or untrustworthy. The receiving mail server may handle the email differently because of the SPF failure, such as marking the email as spam or rejecting the email…

and

What SPF records do I use? – DreamHost

If you’re hosting your email at DreamHost, no changes need to be made to your SPF records. DreamHost’s SPF records are generated automatically and should work without any issues or additional changes.

IP's in DreamHost’s SPF records include mail servers and the relay machine IP addresses.

Except this isn’t true. When I was investigating my family’s Google email Hell I found that emails sent from DH Webmail didn’t have SFP records in the header. I tested using mxtoolbox.com, Kitterman, and by inspecting emails in Gmail using the ‘view original’ option. I also directly inspected my DNS settings. No SFP.

When I asked DH tech support admitted their documentation was wrong and responded (emphases mine):

If it were, you'd see the SPF setup on the 'Manage Domains' > 'DNS' pageby default for every domain hosting mail with us along with the DKIM
 that's already there, but SPF is NOT set by default (at this time).

… we should start setting it by default, so that info above may be accurate in the future. We’re doing a lot with emails right now, which is still mostly in the discussion phase, so this is likely something that’ll come up as well what with various hosts starting to strengthen their incoming filters to help stop spam.”

For the domain in question, I’ve added the record for you through the 'Manage Domains' > 'DNS' page as a TXT record:

… We have now added the TXT record for .faughnan.com with value v=spf1 include:netblocks.dreamhost.com. Our DNS servers will start serving this
record within a couple of minutes.

My DNS records now show an SFP TXT record:

v=spf1 include:netblocks.dreamhost.com

Unfortunately adding the SPF didn’t help with Google treating my DH redirects as spam. I have a hunch those come from DH’s own SMTP service (homiemail) and that service might have a reputational issue with Google, but I don’t really know what’s going on. I don’t think anyone does any more.

What about DKIM?

DH claims DKIM is set automatically and I can confirm that works, at least for a domain that was relatively recently added to DH. On the other hand when I examine that domain’s DNS settings I see several records not in my older domain. I wonder if DH has never updated DNS settings for older domains, such that they are now obsolete. OTOH, even for a new domain there were no SPF records.

And then there’s Google domain verification (postmaster services). I turned those on my adding their key to a TXT field, but a few days later it wasn’t there any more. I assume DH removed it. I’m kind of losing confidence in Dreamhost.

Google sent my family into email Hell. This is how we climbed out.

… we’re living in a time when algorithmic software is just good enough to eat the world and still bad enough to be endlessly frustrating. (Daniel Genser, via Twitter)

A few days ago I sent an email to Emily and a few seconds later this came back:

Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON@homiemail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com>
Tue, May 8, 9:52 PM (4 days ago)

This is the mail system at host homiemail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

…

                DreamHost Email Support

   <emily@googleappdomain.com> (expanded from <emily@redirectemail.com>): host
    ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com[173.194.202 .27] said: 550-5.7.1 [208.97.132.209      12]
    Our system has detected that this message is 550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited
    mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, 550-5.7.1 this message
    has been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.1
    https://support.google.com/mai l/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError 550 5.7.1  for
    more information. q3-v6si11849599pgn.272 - gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA
    command)

Google had sent me to email Hell. Everything I sent to Emily was rejected. It was the same story with emails sent to my children. Whatever I sent, Google rejected.

I think the problem, as far as Google was concerned, was that I was using redirects. This is old net tech. If you own a domain, say “kateva.org”, your hosting service will usually let you define as many redirect “email addresses” in the domain as you might want. They aren’t real email addresses though, they’re redirects. You have to define a true email recipient for each one.

Google didn’t see the email I sent Emily as coming from my personal gmail account, it saw it as coming from the SMTP service that works with my domain (which I’ll call “kateva.org"); in this case homiemail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com. It appears either my domain, or that sending service, had bad Google-karma [1]. Google sent the rejection to “homiemail” (I think!) and homiemail sent it to me.

We were in trouble. It was likely that email sent to our family members was going to be bouncing back in a very confusing way.

I tested sending from various email addresses and using various software (web client vs. iOS Mail, etc) to see which was rejected and which accepted:

Sender	Redirect	Result
GSuite (web client)	Yes	Success
Yahoo (web client)	Yes	Success
Gmail (web client)	Yes	Success
GSuite (macOS mail, iOS mail)	Yes	Success
Gmail (macOS mail, iOS mail)	Yes	FAIL
Gmail (macOS mail, iOS mail)	NO	Success

It turned out my mail was only hitting Google’s spam threshold when I sent it from my personal Gmail (not GSuite email) using iOS or macOS Mail. Everything else worked, including using my personal Gmail by web interface.

No, I don’t understand what’s happening here. I can speculate that Google rates sending services roughly as follows: GSuite_web > Gmail_web, Yahoo_web > GSuite_client > Gmail_client. The combination of Gmail_client (macOS Mail) and the redirect dropped my email score below Google’s internal cutoff.

There’s not much to do about this. It’s not like Google is going to help. I was on my own and we were in trouble.

The first thing I did was change the redirects to send all the mail to an old school Dreamhost local webmail box. That stopped the bouncing. I could forward from that box to my gmail and reroute important emails manually to other addresses for Emily and the kids.

Next I discovered, contrary to their documentation, that Dreamhost had not enabled DKIM or SFP on my domain. I fixed that (separate post pending) to see if it would improve the reputation score for my domain but it had no effect. I suspect the reputation that mattered was that of homiemail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com.

That left me with these options …

1. Setup Dreamhost mailboxes for each person and create redirects to them.
1. Set up a forward from the DH mailbox to another of our family GSuite emails (I picked several Google Apps/GSuite things when they were free)
2. Have our family GSuite emails do POP retrieval from the DH mailbox.

Dreamhost recommended the 1.2 (second). But I had a third option…

… even though I’d not used it, the problem domain (“kateva.org”) had an old legacy GSuite. I went into that GSuite, defined an account for Emily and kids, and then switched Dreamhost MX to use the GSuite email rather than DH email [2]. I had lost some faith in DreamHost by that point and I figured that since Google rules the net I was better off inside their castle.

And that’s where we are at the moment.

One more weird thing. For 2-3 family members I received a notice that a non-apps Gmail account already existed for them. I didn’t create those accounts but maybe my kids did? (It’s complicated, but somehow when I did Google Voice for them it did … something … brain shutting down ….) Apparently Google lets one do this! They wouldn’t have received email though, DNS records were using DreamHost MX redirects. If you own a domain, and create Google Apps account that matches the existing address, it gets renamed to something like “username%domainname@gtempaccount.com” email. Wow. [3]

It’s Google’s world, we just play in it.

Oh — and don’t use redirects. Google doesn’t approve.

- fn -

[1] Dreamhost denies that they’re in any kind of trouble with Google — but really, how would anyone know. Maybe it was my domain that Google didn’t like — we get a lot of spam and in this setup all that spam would seem to be coming from my domain.

[2] This wipes out all the past redirects. GSuite supported aliases so I moved them into there. Fortunately I’d saved the redirect records before making the MX switch.

[3] Google has an article on conflicting accounts, here is how they are resolved. I think Google Voice was the primary route for creating conflicting accounts — an artifact of how Google switched Voice credential systems post acquisition.