And sure enough, there it is:
Aug 3 12:15:23 fusion dovecot: auth(default): client in: AUTH 1 PLAIN service=imap secured lip=127.0.0.1 rip=127.0.0.1 lport=143 rport=19068 resp=<hidden> Aug 3 12:15:23 fusion dovecot: auth(default): bsdauth(benny,127.0.0.1): lookup Aug 3 12:15:23 fusion dovecot: auth(default): bsdauth(benny,127.0.0.1): password mismatch
Did you check with auth_debug_passwords=yes what the password is? v1.2 doesn't seem to log it clearly, but by base64 decoding resp= value you could see it.
I did, yes. However, it didn't output plain text, so I didn't go hunting as to what format I was seeing. The "password mismatch" seemed to point to Squirrelmail, so I moved on towards that angle. I'll decode it and see what's actually happening to the password, that might help track down the issue.
The "password mismatch" would suggest that Squirrelmail may be having a problem, which I have asked about on their list. However, just to cover my bases, is there something else that could have happened that would be causing dovecot to get *random* password mismatch errors?
I vaguely remember seeing something like this before too .. but I don't remember what the end result was. Maybe you could find something from Dovecot mailing list archives.
I did do some searching in the archives before asking, but I'll certainly go back and do some more exhaustive searching.
Thank you for all your help, Timo, it's greatly appreciated!
Benny
-- "Something's going on in this house - last night, I saw a face!" "Did it have a nose?" "Yes!" "That sounds like a face all right." -- Scary Movie 4