[Dovecot] Baffled after upgrade

[Bert Todger]

Hello all,

I have just upgraded my Fedora 13 system to F15. With it came a shiny new dovecot 2.0.13 (Details of dovecot -n below).

The configuration is different from the dovecot 1.something that I had been used to with F13, but I managed to get it working and all was well...

Without changing anything related to dovecot (as far as I know), after a reboot, dovecot stopped working. I did a bit of digging, upped the verbosity of logging and found this in the logs:

=======8<=================================================================
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: passwd-file /etc/passwd.dovecot: Read 3 users
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: auth client connected (pid=16699)
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: client in: AUTH	1	PLAIN	service=imap	secured	lip=192.168.2.2	rip=192.168.2.2	lport=993	rport=33960
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: client out: CONT	1	
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: client in: CONT	1	AG1hcmsAaWxIYWFkSFA=
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: Loading modules from directory: /usr/lib/dovecot/auth
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: Module loaded: /usr/lib/dovecot/auth/libauthdb_ldap.so
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: Module loaded: /usr/lib/dovecot/auth/libdriver_sqlite.so
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: Module loaded: /usr/lib/dovecot/auth/libmech_gssapi.so
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: passwd-file /etc/passwd.dovecot: Read 3 users
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: pam(mark,192.168.2.2): lookup service=dovecot
Jun 02 09:58:21 auth: Debug: pam(mark,192.168.2.2): #1/1 style=1 msg=Password: 
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Info: pam(mark,192.168.2.2): pam_authenticate() failed: Authentication failure (password mismatch?) (given password: mypass)
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Debug: passwd-file(mark,192.168.2.2): lookup: user=mark file=/etc/passwd.dovecot
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Debug: client out: OK	1	user=mark
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Debug: master in: REQUEST	1125646337	16699	1	69152b70b5461508ad2a3eb02942b883
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Debug: passwd(mark,192.168.2.2): lookup
Jun 02 09:58:23 auth: Debug: master out: USER	1125646337	mark	system_groups_user=mark	uid=500	gid=500	home=/home/mark
Jun 02 09:58:23 imap-login: Info: Login: user=<mark>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.2.2, lip=192.168.2.2, mpid=16705, TLS
=========8<===============================================================

Now it's entirely possible that I simply don't properly understand the password authentication process. I have PLAIN passwords set in /etc/passwd.dovecot which it seems to be reading OK, my /etc/dovecot/conf.d/auth-passwdfile.conf.ext file contains just

=========8<=============================================
passdb {
  driver = passwd-file
  args = scheme=PLAIN username_format=%u /etc/passwd.dovecot
}
=========8<=============================================

and nothing else.

...and as I said - it *was* working fine.

I am puzzled by the reference to PAM authentication in the logs and in the dovecot -n output.

Should I comment out all references to PAM? (in auth-system.conf.ext?)

I and my family access mail through a variety of means, using Evolution on the home network, mobile devices (eg iPhone), webmail (using squirrelmail configured to access dovecot) and over ssh (using mutt). I don't necessarily want my (or their) email passwords to be the same as our PAM logon passwords (and at the moment they're not). So for me PLAIN has been the best solution up until now.

What is my best (and simplest) solution?

Thanks in advance

Mark



# dovecot -n
# 2.0.13: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.i686.PAE i686 Fedora release 15 (Lovelock) 
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes
auth_verbose = yes
auth_verbose_passwords = plain
log_path = /var/log/dovecot
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
passdb {
  driver = pam
}
passdb {
  args = scheme=PLAIN username_format=%u /etc/passwd.dovecot
  driver = passwd-file
}
ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem
userdb {
  driver = passwd
}