Could it be related to something in your dovecot configuration (which you didn't post)? Despite the fact that an interesting conversation is developing in the exim bug report, this setup does usually work, including on one of your servers as you have indicated. On my end, I never had issues between dovecot 2.1.7 and 2.2.13, using the exact same authenticator config in exim.
On 07/30/2014 04:18 PM, Mildred Ki'Lya wrote:
Hi,
I'm trying to set up exim (4.83) as a submission server, and need to set up the dovecot authentication in exim. I'm having an issue with that (documented at https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=756258)
The problem is that exim doesn't follow the handshake as described here: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Design/AuthProtocol. The wiki page says that the client should start the handshake, but exim waits for the server to start and to receive the DONE command until it starts its own handshake.
What I actually get is:
exim connects to dovecot auth dovecot VERSION 1 1 dovecot SPID 48And then, dovecot stops (I presume it waits for the client handshake, VERSION and CPID). Exim on its side waits for the DONE. This results in the SMTP connection by exim never replying to the AUTH PLAIN command.
This is exim 4.80 (or 4.83) and dovecot 2.1.7.
I have another server set up almost exactly the same (but with dovecot 2.1.17) where it does work. In that case, dovecot finishes the handshake before exim starts its handshake. It results in:
exim connects to dovecot auth dovecot VERSION 1 1 dovecot MECH PLAIN plaintext dovecot SPID 10905 dovecot CUID 1 dovecot COOKIE d3861d29441f06d962490eab8549fd46 dovecot DONE exim VERSION 1 0 exim CPID 10619 exim AUTH 1 PLAIN service=smtp securedrip=82.247.184.53 lip=80.67.179.36 nologin resp=<base64 encoded string>
I don't understand what could change the dovecot behaviour in that regard. Is there a solution that would only require modifying the configuration?
Thank you,
Mildred