Thank you for your advice gentlemen.

I removed the CRAM authentication method from esmtpd. This has eliminated the authentication error from the log file.

However, there is still a substantial delay in submitting messages to the server from Thunderbird. For example, it takes less than one second to submit a message to Gmail remote SMTP. Gmail uses port 587 for remote message submission with authentication. I have tried to submit to submit to Courier on 587 and 25, and am experiencing a delay of anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds for the server to accept the message. I have checked server response and network latency through various methods (ping, http, pop3), and it is in the milliseconds. So, there is no reason for a short test message to take 5 to 10 seconds for transmission. There is nothing in the server logs to indicate that anything unusual is happening.

Some additional info: 1. Authdaemon is setup for only two processes - as my server is only used by a maximum of two people at any one time. 2. Daily mail throughput would less 200 to 300 messages per day!! 3. I do not have any local IP addresses setup in smptaccess except for the default localhost, so authentication is required to RELAY.

Would appreciate any and all advice and guidance to troubleshoot and debug this issue.

Thanks.

Abid

Sam Varshavchik wrote:

Aldisa Admin writes:

I have two problems that I need assistance with:

1. I am using Thunderbird mail client and setup SMTP with authentication. When I send a message it takes quite long for it to go through. The server logs are as follows:

Dec 22 17:13:28 server courieresmtpd: started,ip=[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Dec 22 17:13:29 server courieresmtpd: error,relay=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx,msg="535 Authentication failed.",cmd: YWJpZCBlNDU2YTJkYWUwZjNhMzFjNGViMTEyMGMyMTc2ODJlYg== Dec 22 17:13:37 server courierd: newmsg,id=0024A81C.458C5891.000097C8:

I can't figure out what is causing the authentication error, as the email eventually goes through without any further action on my part.

You may not be required to authenticate in the first place, from your IP address, so you can proceed to send mail, unauthenticated.

You may not be able to authenticate either because you did not supply the correct userid/password, or you've enabled CRAM authentication, but you are storing encrypted passwords. CRAM authentication requires cleartext passwords.

Gordon Messmer wrote:

Aldisa Admin wrote:

1. I am using Thunderbird mail client and setup SMTP with authentication. When I send a message it takes quite long for it to go through. The server logs are as follows:

Dec 22 17:13:28 server courieresmtpd: started,ip=[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Dec 22 17:13:29 server courieresmtpd: error,relay=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx,msg="535 Authentication failed.",cmd: YWJpZCBlNDU2YTJkYWUwZjNhMzFjNGViMTEyMGMyMTc2ODJlYg==

You've probably enabled an authentication method that you don't support. Maybe CRAM-MD5, without the plain-text password in your userdb? Unless you're going to add the plain-text password, you'll need to turn off the CRAM-* methods, and just use LOGIN.

2. I would like to change to the default logging options. Currently each and every pop login gets written to my maillog file. I would prefer to have this written to a different file. I setup an entry in my syslog.conf:

pop3d.* /var/log/pop3dlog

Yeah, you can't do that. The "facility" field isn't free-form. There's no such thing as a "pop3d" facility. Read the man page for syslogd.

You can probably do what you want if you run syslog-ng, but the configuration is fairly complex.