Need to authenticate Outlook and NTLM

Mark Foley mfoley at ohprs.org
Fri Feb 8 07:51:01 EET 2019


More on this ...

I short-sheeted ntlm_auth to see what was being passed to it. It is getting as arg1:

--helper-protocol=squid-2.5-ntlmssp

I tried running ntlm_auth at the command line as:

ntlm_auth --username=user --password=password --helper-protocol=squid-2.5-ntlmssp

It did nothing, just hung there. The ntlm_auth man page says:

--helper-protocol=PROTO
  Operate as a stdio-based helper. Valid helper protocols are:

  squid-2.5-ntlmssp
    Server-side helper for use with Squid 2.5's NTLMSSP authentication.

    Requires access to the directory winbindd_privileged in $LOCKDIR. The protocol used is described here:
    http://devel.squid-cache.org/ntlm/squid_helper_protocol.html. This protocol has been extended to allow the
    NTLMSSP Negotiate packet to be included as an argument to the YR command. (Thus avoiding loss of information in
    the protocol exchange).

Squid NTLM authentication? As far as I know, I don't have Squid. If I leave off the
--helper-protocol bit on the ntlm_auth command line, it returns an OK status.

Is there a way to NOT pass "--helper-protocol=squid-2.5-ntlmssp"? Would this help?

--Mark

-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 00:19:19 -0500
Organization: Ohio Highway Patrol Retirement System
To: dovecot at dovecot.org
Subject: Need to authenticate Outlook and NTLM

I've posted questions on this before, but now I really, really need a solution.

Using Dovecot 2.2.33.2

We've been using Dovecot as IMAP server for several years on a Linux host which is also the
Active Directory / Domain Controller.  We have both Thunderbird and Outlook clients.  The
Thunderbird clients authenticate w/o problem with AD credentials using Kerberos/GSSAPI. 

I've never been able to get the Outlook clients to authenticate using domain credentials, so
I've also hard-coded user and password into /etc/passwd and let the Dovecot authenticate via
PLAIN LOGIN.  Now, however, I am mandated to switch all users to Outlook, so I need an AD
credential solution. 

I found https://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/ActiveDirectoryNtlm and followed those instructions.
The first problem I ran into was in Step 3 where it said to put the following line in the
config: 

auth_ntlm_use_winbind = yes

This gave me an error when I restarted Dovecot:

Restarting Dovecotdoveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file /usr/local/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf line 84: Unknown setting: auth_ntlm_use_winbind

googling this error indicated that this was a version 1.x directive and 2.x used only
auth_use_winbind.  I removed the auth_ntlm_use_winbind and Dovecot restart.  If this is true,
the wiki should be updated since it purports to be a version 2.x wiki.  I followed the rest of
the instructions on that wiki and my modified config is:

$ doveconf -n
# 2.2.33.2 (d6601f4ec): /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 4.4.157 x86_64 Slackware 14.2 
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes
auth_gssapi_hostname = $ALL
auth_krb5_keytab = /etc/dovecot/dovecot.keytab
auth_mechanisms = plain login gssapi ntlm
auth_use_winbind = yes
auth_username_format = %n
auth_verbose = yes
auth_verbose_passwords = plain
disable_plaintext_auth = no
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot_info
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
passdb {
  driver = shadow
}
protocols = imap
ssl_cert = </etc/ssl/certs/OHPRS/GoDaddy/Apache/2016-08-10/54e789087d419b6e.crt
ssl_key =  # hidden, use -P to show it
userdb {
  driver = passwd
}
verbose_ssl = yes

New additions to my pre-ntlm conf is only the 'ntlm' added the the auth_mechanism and:

auth_winbind_helper_path = /usr/bin/ntlm_auth

which interestingly doesn't show into the 'doveconf -n' output, above. Is it a default?

I then attempted to connect from Outlook and got the error:

auth: Info: ntlm(?,192.168.0.58,<qd9nulmB4sLAqAA6>): ntlm_auth reports broken helper: NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL

After more searching I came across this post, https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=774263
which, in summary, said that ntlm_auth had to run as root. So, I added the following to my
dovecot config per that post's suggestion:

service auth {
  user = root
}

After restarting and trying again to connect from Outlook I got the message:

auth: Info: ntlm(?,192.168.0.58,<SCINjFqBKcXAqAA6>): user not authenticated: NT_STATUS_NO_MEMORY

At this point I've been unable to find a solution to this error. I've listed the entire dovecot
log output for this last attempt to connect from Outlook below.

Has anyone in the Universe successfully connected from Outlook using active domain credentials?
If so, what's the secret? What am I not doing correctly?

Thanks for any and all help! --Mark

dovecot log:

Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: Loading modules from directory: /usr/local/lib/dovecot/auth
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: Module loaded: /usr/local/lib/dovecot/auth/lib20_auth_var_expand_crypt.so
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: Read auth token secret from /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/auth-token-secret.dat
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: auth client connected (pid=16357)
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: client in: AUTH    1       NTLM    service=imap    session=SCINjFqBKcXAqAA6        lip=192.168.0.2 rip=192.168.0.58       lport=143       rport=50473
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: client passdb out: CONT    1
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: client in: CONT    1       TlRMTVNTUAABAAAAB4IIogAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGAbEdAAAADw== (previous base64 data may contain sensitive data)
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: client passdb out: CONT    1       TlRMTVNTUAACAAAACAAIADgAAAAFgomifTyOI3AwfogAAAAAAAAAAGIAYgBAAAAABgEAAAAAAA9IAFAAUgBTAAIACABIAFAAUgBTAAEACABNAEEASQBMAAQAFABoAHAAcgBzAC4AbABvAGMAYQBsAAMAHgBtAGEAaQBsAC4AaABwAHIAcwAuAGwAbwBjAGEAbAAHAAgAVIrLTWi/1AEAAAAA
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Debug: client in: CONT    1       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 (previous base64 data may contain sensitive data)
Feb 07 23:39:40 auth: Info: ntlm(?,192.168.0.58,<SCINjFqBKcXAqAA6>): user not authenticated: NT_STATUS_NO_MEMORY
Feb 07 23:39:42 auth: Debug: client passdb out: FAIL    1



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