Hi,

I am trying to establish an IMAP mail service accessible using a current Thunderbird on a laptop.

I used Macports to install Dovecot2 (2.1.5) on an older Snow Leopard Mac mini with Intel Core Duo (specifically a Macmini1,1). My goal is to be able to run sieve under dovecot2 and offload the email triage from my work laptop to the little mail server.

Mail appears to show up on the server just fine. I'm having trouble getting Tbird to log in and access properly.

Because there are so many components in play (Tbird, pam, Dovecot2, macports, OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8) (dovecot by itself seems to have quite a few settings), it is hard to tell what bit is out of whack.

The message I get from Tbird 13.0.1 for OS X (on Lion) is:

Alert: The IMAP server bentley on TheMini does not support the selected authentication method. Please change the 'Authentication method' in the 'Account Settings | Server settings'.

When I set up the account, Tbird's automatic configuration invents a fake mail service based on my domain name, but appears to configure things sensibly once I switch to the manual configuration and fill in the relevant IP information. It does not appear to care whether it has a password or not.

When I set up the account manually on TBird, I let it set up as:

IMAP (ipv4)xx.xxx.xx.xx Port: 143 Connection security: None Authentication method: Password, transmitted insecurely SMTP xxxxxxxx.com Port: 587

The dovecot.conf tree includes these:

passdb { driver = pam }

userdb { driver = passwd }

default_login_user = _dovenull

default_internal_user = _dovecot

service imap-login { executable = /opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login

inet_listener imap { address = * port = 143 } }

service imap { executable=/opt/local/libexec/dovecot/imap process_limit = 1024 }

service lmtp { unix_listener lmtp { } }

Issuing the command:

dovecot --build-options

produces:

Build options: ioloop=kqueue notify=kqueue ipv6 openssl io_block_size=8192 Mail storages: shared mdbox sdbox maildir mbox cydir imapc pop3c raw SQL drivers: Passdb: checkpassword pam passwd passwd-file Userdb: checkpassword passwd prefetch passwd-file

The /etc/pam.d/dovecot file contains:

# pop3, imap, smtp : auth account password session auth required pam_opendirectory.so account required pam_permit.so password required pam_deny.so session required pam_permit.so

Dovecot provides the following debug messages on the console when I add args = failure_show_msg=yes to passdb in the relevant dovecot conf file:

Jul 1 11:12:38 xx-xxx-xx-xx-nerewhon dovecot[3871]: auth: Debug:auth client connected (pid=5047) Jul 1 11:12:40 xx-xxx-xx-xx-nerewhon dovecot[3871]: imap-login: Disconnected (no auth attempts in 2 secs): user=<>, rip=192.168.xx.xx, lip=xx.xxx.xx.xx

I recently discovered doveadm and used it with:

doveadm config

to create what I think is the current dovecot.conf file. I hesitate to inflict that on the list without being told, "yeah, we need that," there may be digest subscribers out there...

I also see these messages show up; they appear unrelated to what I do with Tbird:

Jul 1 11:37:33 xx-xxx-xx-xx-nerewhon dovecot[3871]:

auth: Debug: Loading modules from directory: /opt/local/lib/dovecot/auth

auth: Debug: auth client connected (pid=5094)

auth: Debug: client in: AUTH 1 PLAIN service=imap secured lip=127.0.0.1 rip=127.0.0.1 lport=143 rport=49774

auth: Debug: client out: CONT 1

auth: Debug: client in: CONT 1 AGJlbnRsZXkAZ3IxbmNo

auth-worker(5100): Debug: Loading modules from directory: /opt/local/lib/dovecot/auth

auth-worker(5100): Debug: pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): lookup service=dovecot

auth-worker(5100): Debug: pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): #1/1 style=1 msg=Password:

auth-worker(5100): pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): pam_authenticate() failed: authentication error (password mismatch?) (given password: whatever)

auth: Debug: client out: FAIL 1 user=bentley reason=Password:

auth: Debug: client in: AUTH 2 PLAIN service=imap secured lip=127.0.0.1 rip=127.0.0.1 lport=143 rport=49774 resp=AGJlbnRsZXkAZ3IxbmNo

auth-worker(5100): Debug: pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): lookup service=dovecot

auth-worker(5100): Debug: pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): #1/1 style=1 msg=Password:

auth-worker(5100): pam(bentley,127.0.0.1): pam_authenticate() failed: authentication error (password mismatch?) (given password: whatever)

auth: Debug: client out: FAIL 2 user=bentley reason=Password: imap-login: Disconnected (auth failed, 2 attempts in 9 secs): user=<bentley>, method=PLAIN, rip=127.0.0.1, lip=127.0.0.1, secured

auth: Debug: Loading modules from directory: /opt/local/lib/dovecot/auth