As we recently announced, we have pursued an opt-in second factor authentication feature on Kolab Now. As described, the implementation is limiting users to the web client, and this requires some reconfiguration of various servers and services.
Kube flatpak not working with nvidia drivers
It was recently pointed out that the Kube flatpak for Kolab Now does not work with nvidia drivers, leaving you with error messages like this:
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast Unrecognized OpenGL version Unrecognized OpenGL version
As it turns out this is a problem with the extension system of flatpak that is used to provide the appropriate graphics driver to the application inside the container. It’s not quite clear what the best solution to the problem will be, but we’re working on it.
For more info about Kube, please head over to About Kube.
Pushing Support to our Enterprise Customer Support Platform
We are preparing a transition from our current platform underpinning the support@kolabnow.com email address — based on OTRS — to a more up-to-date, feature-rich environment based on Phabricator.
For various reasons, we much anticipate this change. Not in the least we’ll have real-time notifications about new tickets, and user responses, and a few chat rooms — it’ll allow us to sort our workload better.
TOTP-based Two Factor Authentication Passed QA
In a previous blog post, I have told you about our experimenting with TOTP-based two factor authentication. It proves functional in the Cockpit and in the Web Client, so we’re preparing the promotion to production.
A Stricter DMARC Policy, Part II
Last month, we let you know a stricter DMARC policy was being applied to Kolab Now infrastructure. With a primary aim to increase our reputation and decrease phishing attempts from clearly false senders, we’ve since learned about some secondary effects;
I Apologize for the Delay
If you’ve noticed our responses to support tickets or monitoring alerts is a little slower than usual, that’s because this is now the view from our office:
Journey to the Center of Kube: Sink
Kube is a client that allows you to work offline, so you can work no matter whether your train just entered a tunnel, you’re on board of a plane or you’re just too lazy to get up and ask for the free wifi password. One implication of this is that we have to deal with fair amounts of data.
Email tends to accumulate quickly, and it’s not uncommon to have mail folders that have somewhere between 40’000 and 200’000 emails in them, so we have to figure out a way to deal with that. At the core of Kube we therefore have Sink; the data-access and synchronization system.
Experimenting with TOTP Two Factor Authentication
We’re currently experimenting with an implementation of TOTP-based 2 factor authentication, allowing our customers to use a second factor.
Until now, Kolab Now required its users to supply a username and a password. This is considered only a single factor, since the username is your email address and thus known to third parties.
Kube for Kolab Now
Early access to our next-generation desktop client Kube is available for Kolab Now users!
Proceed to the download and installation instructions to get started.
A Stricter DMARC Policy
Sometimes, we receive reports that either our general reputation has declined to the point that certain receiving parties will block some of the email sent through our infrastructure, and that bothers us — because it bothers our customers. This usually involves just a limited number of messages, but is annoying nonetheless.
Other times we receive reports of phishing. These usually do not include verbiage that is suitable for repeating in this here blog, as the reports reply to messages do not originate from us, usually refer to external, third party sites but are most importantly also not submitted through our infrastructure. We follow up these occurrences with abuse reports to web server hosting companies, email providers and through other associated channels, but responses are often not thorough and not quick.
