[Dovecot] how to "authenticate plain" ???

[Ben Winslow]

On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 16:00 +0200, Steffen Brunk wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> my name is Steven and of course: I got a problem...
> we are using dovecot 0.99 because it´s the actual stable version for 
> RedHat 4 Enterprise.

You will save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run if you build a
package of dovecot 1.0.x for yourself, or grab a pre-made package from
e.g. atrpms.

> I am trying to authenticate using "PLAIN" but I don´t know how.

> what do I have to send after receiving the "+"-symbol?

PLAIN auth expects "username<NUL>authname<NUL>password" encoded in
base64.  Usually, username and authname will be the same, and you
probably won't need to worry about cases where they're different.

One easy way to encode the authentication information (because of the
embedded NULs) is to use perl on the command line, e.g.: perl
-MMIME::Base64 -e 'print encode_base64("user\0user\0password")'

An easier way to test various authentication mechanisms is with the
imtest utility from Cyrus (packaged in cyrus21-clients in Debian and
cyrus-imapd-utils on RHEL4.)  The package containing the clients doesn't
require you to actually install the Cyrus imap daemon, and it also
contains smtptest, pop3test, and nntptest which are handy for testing
other sorts of servers.

Here's example output, so you can see exactly what's sent/received from
the IMAP server (S: = server, C: = client, and after the 'Security
strength factor' line, the session is connected to the terminal in much
the same way as telnetting to the server.)

(rain at spock:~) imtest localhost
S: * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN AUTH=CRAM-MD5 AUTH=NTLM] Server ready.
C: C01 CAPABILITY
S: * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN AUTH=CRAM-MD5 AUTH=NTLM
S: C01 OK Capability completed.
C: A01 AUTHENTICATE PLAIN
S: +
Please enter your password:
C: cmFpbgByYWluAGhlbGxvLGRvdmVjb3Qh
S: A01 OK Logged in.
Authenticated.
Security strength factor: 0
0 logout
* BYE Logging out
0 OK Logout completed.
Connection closed.

HTH,
-- 
Ben Winslow <rain at bluecherry.net>
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