SMTP authentication not working

I set up an ISPConfig server some time ago, following the perfect setup. My SMTP server works for sending mail, but doesn't require or ask for any authentication.

Is there a setting I have to make it require SMTP auth?

-Antun

 

Here you go. I've replaced the domain name of the ISPConfig server with "mydomain.com". Note that mydomain.com refers to the ISPConfig server itself, not one of the sites on it that I send mail from.

Thanks,

Antun

 

Hi Till,

I sent the email from a mail client on my laptop, not from this server.

-Antun

 

Any errors in your mail log?
What's the output of

Code:

telnet localhost 25

and then

Code:

ehlo localhost

?

 

I get the same output regardless of whether I log in as [email protected] or [email protected]:

Remember, mydomain.com is the domain of the ISPConfig server. webX_myusername is my username on one of the sites that is controlled by that ISPConfig server (i.e. mysite.com).

Thanks,

Antun

 

I understand. However, when I try to provide a username and password for the SMTP server (in say, Thunderbird), it fails to authenticate me. It simply doesn't accept my username/password (although it does let me send emails to other accounts on the same domain with no authentication).

I know I'm using the right credentials, because I'm able to check my mail using Thunderbird.

 

Are you sure you filled in your username and password in the right place in Thunderbird?

 

Absolutely!

I set the username and password under:

Tools>Account Settings>Outgoing Server (SMTP)

Note I used webX_myusername as the username and the password that works for SSH access. webX_myusername is the username from the mysite.com domain that is one of the domains that is managed by ISPConfig.

-Antun

 

Are there any errors in your mail log? Which distribution are you using?

 

Here's what shows up in /var/log/mail.log when I try to connect using SMTP authentication:

I've obscured myworkdomain.com and the IP address.

-Antun

 

What's the output of

Code:

ps aux|grep saslauthd

? What's in /etc/default/saslauthd? Does it work when you restart saslauthd?

Code:

/etc/init.d/saslauthd restart

 

Hi Falko,

Here's the output I get from ps aux | grep saslauthd:

When I try to restart it, as you suggested, there are no error messages written out to the terminal but it looks like the saslauthd service is not being started correctly. It still doesn't show up if I run ps aux... and I can't send emails either.

Thanks,

Antun

 

Woohoo, it's working!

There were no errors in any of the log files you mentioned when I restarted saslauthd. No log entries at all, in fact. So I took a look at the saslauthd startup script (/etc/init.d/saslauthd), and noticed that it exited silently as follows:

Code:

# If we're not to start the daemon, simply exit
if [ "${START}" != "yes" ]; then
    exit 0
fi

The START variable was set in a DEFAULTS file (/etc/default/saslauthd). I opened that file and found this piece of code:

Code:

# This needs to be uncommented before saslauthd will be run automatically
# START=yes

I uncommented the START=yes line and tried restarting saslauthd, and hey presto, it worked.

Thank you both Falko and Till for your patience and help on this!

Now I have a couple more follow-up questions:

• Why was that line ever commented out at all?
• Did I do the right thing here, or should I not make changes to stuff in /etc/default?
• On Ubuntu, how do I ensure that the saslauthd startup script gets called on a reboot?

Again, many thanks for your help on this.

-Antun

 

This a "disabled by default" security approach of modern OS'es.

/etc/default/* file are designed to be edited by admin on Debian.

You may want to read "man update-rc.d".

 

Great. Thanks for the info everyone!

-Antun