Techtips
 
Home
Info
Consulting
Projects
TechTips
Library
Gizmos
Links
Misc
Opinions
Microsoft
SPAM
SiteMap

Updated:
06 Feb, 2007



KQLZ.Org - Rock and Roll the way we remember it best!
KQLZ - Click to Rock

Members and Affiliates of the RIAA are expressly forbidden from accessing this website.
 

VersaMail ESMTP (SMTP) AUTH is broken?

Bought a brand new spanking Tungsten T5, did you??
(And apprently the new Treo's as well!)
Can't get email to send out, eh?
Is it really broken? Well - Yes and no.

(11/24/2005 - Note for recent readers: I bought my Palm T5 in late Dec. 2004 and wrote this page in early Jan. 2005 - see the update below on my fix being dated Jan.21, 2005. If you've contacted Palm and told them about this to get a "this is the first we've heard of it"... You can say "bullcrap" - I wrote them about it back in Jan 2005 and never got squat out of them)

As of VersaMail v2.7.1 on my brand new Palm Tungsten-T5, outbound mail with ESMTP is broken because VersaMail accepts an offer to send a PLAIN type AUTH, but then sends an empty line. (username and password are supposed to go there!) Oops!

UPDATE: 01/21/2005:
Thanks to a user who found this web page (hail the power of the Internet), he described to me his new T5 worked.. but wasn't using the PLAIN auth mechanism... It seems VersaMail will use either PLAIN or LOGIN (which the Cyrus SASL guys say in the docs not to use since it's so outdated) but PLAIN is in fact broken while LOGIN works as expected.

I've included below a snippet of WORKING authentication with the LOGIN mech below. Yes. I jumbled the password lines so they should NOT be decryptable. If they are.. WoW! The laws of random text entry! Who'da thunk?

So, in the end, case solved thanks to Matt (the user who emailed me). If VersaMail isn't sending email for you, make sure your server uses AUTH mechs LOGIN, and not PLAIN. I used PLAIN for netscape support back in the day, but even Netscape doesn't use PLAIN anymore. They use CRAM-MD5. So I just took PLAIN out.

I hope this clears up things for folks who are struggling as to why this isn't working for them...

UPDATE: 02/06/2007:
ALL HAIL THE POWER OF THE INTERNET! (wink)
Lance Cotton writes in:

I couldn't get rid of PLAIN auth for other reasons, but I did determine that I could change the order of the presented methods from (in my case):

250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN

to

250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN

and Versamail would take the first one it knew how to do, which is LOGIN.

Thanks for the tip Lance!! Our tummies are especially grateful!


Here's a snippet of a Broken VersaMail Conversation:

sendmail[21804]: STARTTLS=server, get_verify: 0 get_peer: 0x0
sendmail[21804]: STARTTLS=server, relay=c-67-165-154-195.client.comcast.net [67.165.154.195], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=NO, cipher=RC4-SHA, bits=128/128
sendmail[21804]: STARTTLS=server, cert-subject=, cert-issuer=
sendmail[21804]: AUTH: available mech=PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 ANONYMOUS, allowed mech=DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTlZ021804: <-- EHLO COM
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: milter=mimedefang, action=helo, continue
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-bkamen-0.benjammin.net Hello c-67-165-154-195.client.comcast.net [67.165.154.195], pleased to meet you
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-PIPELINING
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-8BITMIME
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-SIZE
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-ETRN
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-AUTH DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250-DELIVERBY
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 250 HELP
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: <-- AUTH PLAIN
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 334
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: --- 535 5.7.0 authentication failed
sendmail[21804]: iBU0oTla021804: AUTH failure (PLAIN): bad protocol / cancel (-5)

Here's a snippet of a working VersaMail Conversation:

sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 250-AUTH DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 250-DELIVERBY
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 250 HELP
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: <-- AUTH LOGIN
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 334 Dudnmsh$72hs
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 334 Hek38S9Ks3sU
sendmail[14074]: j0L4XAVZ014074: --- 235 2.0.0 OK Authenticated



Your Host: ec2-44-200-174-157.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Your Addr: 44.200.174.157



© 1999-2024 BenJammin.Net.