I'm replacing my old Fedora 7 mail server with a new one running CentOS6.3. The old server uses plain-text logins and password for pop3 and IMAP.

I'm unable to get dovecot to authenticate. It's failing the password check.

Trying 192.168.1.50... Connected to orion (192.168.1.50). Escape character is '^]'. +OK orion.crucis.net Dovecot ready. user joe +OK pass abcdefg -ERR Authentication failed. quit +OK Logging out Connection closed by foreign host.

However, another user on the same system works!

Trying 192.168.1.50... Connected to orion (192.168.1.50). Escape character is '^]'. +OK orion.crucis.net Dovecot ready. user bob +OK pass jklmnop +OK Logged in. quit +OK Logging out. Connection closed by foreign host.

I'm looping through eth0 in both of the above. The results are the same if I telnet from 192.168.1.30.

User bob was the one I created on the initial CentOS install, joe was added later.

Here is the extract from maillog.

Oct 4 15:54:12 orion dovecot: auth: pam(joe,192.168.1.30): pam_authenticate() failed: Auth authentication failure (password mismatch?) (given password:abcdefg) Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: client out: FAIL#0113#011user=joe Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: IMAP-login: Disconnected (auth failed, 3 attempts): user=<joe 1>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.1.30, lip=192.168.1.50 Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: client out: CONT#0112#011VXNlcm5hbWU6 Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: client in: CONT#0112#011Y3J1Y2lz Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: client out: CONT#0112#011UGFzc3dvcmQ6 Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: client in: CONT#0112#011dzB0bXcvMA== Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: pam(joe,192.168.1.30): lookup service=dovecot Oct 4 15:54:14 orion dovecot: auth: Debug: pam(joe,192.168.1.30): #1/1 style=1 msg=Passwor d: Oct 4 15:54:16 orion dovecot: auth: pam(crucis,192.168.1.30): pam_authenticate() failed: Auth entication failure (password mismatch?) (given password: abcdefg)

Here's the output from dovecot -n

# 2.0.9: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 2.6.32-279.5.2.el6.x86_64 x86_64 CentOS release 6.3 (Final) auth_debug = yes auth_debug_passwords = yes auth_mechanisms = plain login auth_verbose = yes auth_verbose_passwords = plain disable_plaintext_auth = no listen = * login_greeting = orion.crucis.net Dovecot ready. mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u managesieve_notify_capability = mailto managesieve_sieve_capability = fileinto reject envelope encoded-character vacation subaddress comparator-i;ascii-numeric relational regex IMAP4flags copy include variables body enotify environment mailbox date mbox_write_locks = fcntl passdb { args = session=yes dovecot driver = pam } plugin { sieve = ~/.dovecot.sieve sieve_dir = ~/sieve } ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem userdb { driver = passwd } protocol pop3 { pop3_client_workarounds = outlook-no-nuls pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv }

Any suggestion how I get dovecot and pam working? Or, is the problem elsewhere?

mw