osx and ofx online banking..

[David Reiser]

On Feb 9, 2009, at 9:48 AM, sergio_101 wrote:

> just checking to see if anyone has gotten online banking to work in
> osx using ofx..
>
> i have installed gnucash using darwin ports.. there was really no
> mention of installing and compiling with the ofx options when i first
> installed, but it appears that you can do ofx on my install...
>
> i have set up my bank, but when i go to retrieve accounts, a window
> will open up, download and process the certificate, then upon failure,
> the window just shuts down.
>
> unfortunately, it happens so fast, that i can't see what it's doing..
>
> is there anywhere where the info that showed up on the dialog is  
> logged?
>
> thanks!


The Online Banking Connection Window has a checkbox "Close when  
finished". Make sure that box is not checked. When the program asks  
you for your pin, you can switch to the OBCW and uncheck the box, then  
go back to the other box and enter your pin. The OBCW should stay open  
even after a failure so you can read the messages.

If aqbanking is crashing for some reason, then  there will be messages  
in the terminal window from which you launched gnucash.

If you set the environment variable AQOFX_LOG_COMM=1, then the ofx  
communication streams (sent and received) are saved to /tmp/ofx.log.   
On a mac, /tmp is a symlink to /private/tmp, but you shouldn't have  
any trouble doing 'cp /tmp/ofx.log ~/Desktop/ofx.log' and then opening  
the log with a text editor. Don't leave the environment variable set  
all the time, since the ofx.log file contains both your login ID and  
password in plain text (they're sent over an https connection, so they  
don't go out on the internet in plain text, but the encryption happens  
after the logging). The ofx.log file will let you know if a connection  
was established and if the bank accepted your credentials.

If you really want to see almost everything that aqbanking and  
gwenhywfar are doing during a connection, you can set the environment  
variables
GWEN_LOGLEVEL=debug and
AQBANKING_LOGLEVEL=debug
Those messages show up in the terminal window where the rest of  
gnucash's messages are displayed. Start with the other methods first,  
as these will produce way more output than you want to wade through.

ofx online banking works well for me except for investment accounts.  
There are some banks who are using additional authentication steps  
these days. If your bank is one of them, you'll probably need a newer  
version of aqbanking, and then you have to experiment to see if  
setting a guid for your account works.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net