Instructions at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/BasicConfiguration say the next thing to test after getting IMAP and Telnet working is to create a dummy user file with the following command:
echo "$USER:{PLAIN}password:$UID:$GID::$HOME" > users
And place it in /etc/dovecot and protect it appropriately. It was also edited to change the plain-text password from `password' to what it really is.
The next section describes changes to 10-auth.conf and other things:
If you used the example configuration files, switch to passwd-file by modifying conf.d/10-auth.conf:
# Add '#' to comment out the system user login for now: #!include auth-system.conf.ext # Remove '#' to use passwd-file: !include auth-passwdfile.conf.ext
In conf.d/auth-passwdfile.conf.ext you should have:
passdb { driver = passwd-file args = scheme=CRYPT username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users } userdb { driver = passwd-file args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users }
Verify with doveconf -n passdb userdb that the output looks like above (and there are no other passdbs or userdbs).
All done successfully.
Now, when I telnet 127.0.0.1 143 and attempt to log in with the string:
a login <any username> <any password>
whether it's one in my users file or not, I get:
a NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.