[Dovecot] Improvements to "Authentication failed" error

[Seth Mattinen]

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> Probably one of the most commonly asked question is "Why does Dovecot
> just say authentication failed"? It would be nice to be able to get rid
> of these questions by having Dovecot itself point out the
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/WhyDoesItNotWork link. But how to do this? There
> are two groups of people here:
> 
> 1) People who look at logs after seeing the "Authentication failed" from
> a client/telnet session.
> 
> 2) People who don't even think about looking at logs.
> 

> Any thoughts?


Honestly - and no offense to anyone on this list who's new - people need
to learn how to help themselves to a certain point. "My password doesn't
work and I know it's right" without ever bothering to 1) look at the
documentation or 2) look at a log is hopeless. At the very least
*everyone* should be able to read the documentation. The documentation
which will tell them #2. I mean, is it really that hard? Reading the
docs and asking "I don't understand blah blah on page blah" is
understandable, but someone not reading and expecting the same answer to
the same question over and over (hence docs or a FAQ) is not your problem.

There's no point in trying to program in fancy conditions for errors
like this. It's just silly. Even if you make these changes I'll bet you
it doesn't make a difference. The same group you're trying to help will
see the long, wordy error message, glaze over it, and go straight to "my
password doesn't work and I know it's right".

~Seth