[Dovecot] auth problem with dovecot-1.0.beta5

[Alan McKay]

Hey folks,

Let me start by saying I really love what I see so far!  Dovecot seems
to be extremely feature-rich, and unlike a lot of free software the
documentation is extremely good!  I gave up on courier IMAP because of
the poor documentation, and I have to say Dovecot sure differentiates
itself in that area!

Unfortunately I still can't get it going :-/

First thing I noticed is that --with-shadow does not appear to be
working on my FreeBSD 6.0 system.  Here is what I built with :

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared --enable-static
--disable-ipv6  --with-ioloop
=poll --with-passwd --with-shadow --with-pam --with-passwd-file
--without-checkpassword --wit
hout-bsdauth --without-gssapi --without-ldap  --with-static-userdb
--without-prefetch-userdb
--without-sql --without-mysql --without-ssl
--with-rundir=/var/run/dovecot --with-storages=mb
ox --without-sql-drivers

However :

root at heimat# dovecot --build-options
Build options: ioloop=poll
Passdb: checkpassword pam passwd passwd-file vpopmail
Userdb: checkpassword passwd passwd-file static vpopmail

And when I try to include the shadow options in the config file  I get
this in the log file :

Apr  8 17:07:38 heimat dovecot: auth(default): Unknown passdb driver
'shadow' (typo, or Dovecot was built without support for it? Check
with dovecot --build-options)

No big deal.  I've never used PAM, but I'll have a go at it.

My config file looks like this :

base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/
protocols = imap
listen = 127.0.0.1
ssl_disable = yes
first_valid_uid = 1000
last_valid_uid = 2000
first_valid_gid = 1000
last_valid_gid = 2000
default_mail_env = mbox:~/IMAP/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
mail_extra_groups = mail
protocol imap {
}
auth_executable = /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth
auth_username_chars =
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890

auth default {
  mechanisms = plain
  userdb passwd {
  }
  passdb pam {
#    args = session=yes *
    args = *
  }
  #passdb passwd {
  #}
  # /etc/shadow or similiar, using getspnam(). Deprecated by PAM nowadays.
  #passdb shadow {
  #}
  user = root
}

And I cannot get my webmail to auth.  So I decided to "telnet
localhost 143" and try typing the login command like the docs suggest.
 But here's what I get :

telnet localhost 143
Trying ::1...
telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.dmz.alanmckay.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Dovecot ready.
LOGIN amckay XXXXXX
LOGIN BAD Error in IMAP command received by server.

Something tells me there is a big problem here :-/

Which brings me to my next question : is there a "latest stable"
release?  I didn't see anything obvious on the website.

thanks!
-Alan


--
"True Budo is done for the sake of building peace. Train every day so as to make
peace between this spirit and all things manifested on the face of the Earth"
      - Ueshiba Morihei