I am seeing the following errors in my log:

Jul 27 18:14:23 aegis dovecot: auth-worker(default_with_listener): pam(user@host.org,74.72.46.170): pam_authenticate() failed: authentication error Jul 27 18:14:23 aegis dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=user@host.org, method=PLAIN, rip=74.72.46.170, lip=206.251.255.39, TLS
This happens *only* for virtual users; local UNIX users authenticate without that first error. However, all users are able to view mail, but that default_with_listener (which I setup just so Postfix could use dovecot to authenticate SASL senders) error only occurs for virtual users. Why is default_with_listener getting involved when users are trying to connect to dovecot directly without any involvement of Postfix? Non-default configuration parameters below; thanks for any hints.

# dovecot -n # 1.1.1: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf listen: 127.0.0.1:143 ssl_listen: *:993 login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login verbose_proctitle: yes first_valid_gid: 0 mail_privileged_group: mail mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir imap_client_workarounds: delay-newmail outlook-idle netscape-eoh tb-extra-mailbox-sep auth default_with_listener: mechanisms: plain login digest-md5 passdb: driver: pam passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/passwd userdb: driver: passwd userdb: driver: passwd-file args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/users socket: type: listen client: path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode: 432 user: postfix group: postfix auth default: mechanisms: plain digest-md5 passdb: driver: passwd-file args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/passwd passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd-file args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot/users userdb: driver: passwd

-- Sahil Tandon sahil@tandon.net