Having a hard time figuring out something that is supposed to be easy. Tryiong to configure Dovecot so that it provides authentication to Exim for outgoing smtp. Tried different things and getting

authentication socket protocol error

dovecot_plain: driver = dovecot public_name = PLAIN server_socket = /var/run/dovecot/auth-client server_set_id = $auth1

auth default {

Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms:

plain digest-md5 cram-md5 apop anonymous

mechanisms = plain

Password database is used to verify user's password (and nothing more).

You can have multiple passdbs and userdbs. This is useful if you want to

allow both system users (/etc/passwd) and virtual users to login without

duplicating the system users into virtual database.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Authentication

PAM authentication. Preferred nowadays by most systems.

Note that PAM can only be used to verify if user's password is correct,

so it can't be used as userdb. If you don't want to use a separate user

database (passwd usually), you can use static userdb.

passdb passwd-file { # Master users that can log in as anyone args = /etc/dovecot.masterusers master = yes pass =yes }

Linuxconf passwd-like file with specified location

passdb passwd-file { args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/shadow.%d }

Linuxconf passwd-like file with specified location

userdb passwd-file { args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/passwd.%d }

User to use for the process. This user needs access to only user and

password databases, nothing else. Only shadow and pam authentication

requires roots, so use something else if possible. Note that passwd

authentication with BSDs internally accesses shadow files, which also

requires roots. Note that this user is NOT used to access mails.

That user is specified by userdb above.

user = root

Number of authentication processes to create

count = 10

}

It's possible to export the authentication interface to other programs,

for example SMTP server which supports talking to Dovecot. Client socket

handles the actual authentication - you give it a username and password

and it returns OK or failure. So it's pretty safe to allow anyone

access to

it. Master socket is used to a) query if given client was successfully

authenticated, b) userdb lookups.

listener sockets will be created by Dovecot's master process using the

settings given inside the auth section

auth default_with_listener { mechanisms = plain

passdb passwd-file { # Master users that can log in as anyone args = /etc/dovecot.masterusers master = yes pass =yes }

passdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/shadow.%d }

userdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/passwd.%d }

socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode = 0666 } } }

auth external { mechanisms = plain

passdb passwd-file { # Master users that can log in as anyone args = /etc/dovecot.masterusers master = yes pass =yes }

passdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/shadow.%d }

userdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/exim/control/vmail/passwd.%d }

socket listen { client { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-client mode = 0666 } }

}