Cannot Login using Outlook Express

Hello… thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

I have a freshly installed CentOS 5.4 and installed VirtualMin from install.sh script. So far everything appears to work fine except for being able to check emails from Outlook Express. All the users on our LAN are Windows boxes and most use Outlook Express for email. All of this sits behind a DD-WRT router connected to the ISP’s Zhone ADSL+ modem.

The domain I set up has been running on a Windows 2003 server for a couple years now using XAMPP and with multiple domains. DNS is correctly configured and not an issue. Port blocking by the ISP is not an issue. The router is correctly configured. The mail server on the W2K3 box (and all other servers including virtual domains) works fine. But I am tired of paying big $$$ to MicroStuff not to mention reliability…

I have some previous Linux experience and have toyed with several distro’s including Fedora, Ubuntu and IredMail. So while not being a stranger to Linux, I am a bit stumped by this issue. I have followed the several threads in the forums and made some changes. I uncommented the “disable_plaintext_auth = no” in Dovecot.

I can send and receive emails to the internet with UserMin.

Note: In the output of error messages and logs below, I have changed the real domain name for privacy purposes.

Outlook Express returns this:

Authentication failed.

Configuration:
Account: 192.168.0.33
Server: 192.168.0.33
User name: dave@“domain_name”.com
Protocol: IMAP
Port: 143
Secure(SSL): 0
Code: 800cccd1

Maillog shows this:

Apr 3 22:47:31 “domain_name” dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.7 starting up
Apr 3 22:47:35 “domain_name” spamd[2788]: logger: removing stderr method
Apr 3 22:47:35 “domain_name” postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system
Apr 3 22:47:35 “domain_name” postfix/master[2843]: daemon started – version 2.3.3, configuration /etc/postfix
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: spamd: server started on port 783/tcp (running version 3.2.5)
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: spamd: server pid: 2790
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: spamd: server successfully spawned child process, pid 2854
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: spamd: server successfully spawned child process, pid 2855
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: prefork: child states: IS
Apr 3 22:47:37 “domain_name” spamd[2790]: prefork: child states: II
Apr 3 23:18:53 “domain_name” dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected: user=<dave@“domain_name”.com>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:192.168.0.7, lip=::ffff:192.168.0.33
Apr 3 23:21:27 “domain_name” dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected: user=<dave@“domain_name”.com>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:192.168.0.7, lip=::ffff:192.168.0.33
Apr 3 23:21:47 “domain_name” dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected: user=<dave@“domain_name”.com>, method=PLAIN, rip=::ffff:192.168.0.7, lip=::ffff:192.168.0.33
Apr 3 23:22:13 “domain_name” dovecot: imap-login: Disconnected: rip=::ffff:192.168.0.7, lip=::ffff:192.168.0.33

PLEASE HELP!.. thanks…

– Not so newbie…

After reading extensively through the many threads and pulling out what little hair I have left, I have finally figured out how to setup VirtualMin in a “Windoze” environment to minimally impact users.

There are essentially six things to do:

  1. Do a clean, fresh install of the OS (CentOS 5.4) in my case, make sure you set the “hostname” to something that is NOT going to be one of the domains hosted on VirtualMin.

  2. Install VirtualMin from the “install.sh” script. After it is done installing, reboot and then “update” all the system packages from within VirtualMin.

  3. in “/etc/sysconfig/saslauthd” edit the “FLAGS=” to read “FLAGS=-r” . You can use the “File Manager” on the “Webmin” side under the “Others” link and “File Manager” . Just navigate to the file and use the “edit” icon on the toolbar to edit and save the changes to “saslauthd”.

  4. now click on the “Servers” link and then click on the “Dovecot” link. You will see the “Edit Config FIle” icon to the right. Click on it. Scroll down until you see “#disable_plaintext_auth = no”. Remove the “#” to uncomment this line. Click on the “Save” button.

  5. now click back over to the VirtualMin side. Click on “System Settings ->Server Templates->Default Settings” From the drop down menu, select “Mail for Domain”. Scroll to the bottom. From the very last line that says “Format for usernames that include domain” select “username@domain” from the drop down menu. Click on “Save” button. Reboot the system.

  6. in Outlook Express, setup the user email account as normal. When done, bring up the Account->Properties->Server tab and make sure to tick the box that says “My servers requires authentication” Click on OK.

You are done! You should now be able to send and receive email normally (or for what passes as normal in a “Windoze” environment.

Make sure when the user refreshes his IMAP folders list, that they also “subscribe” (double click on the “spam” folder. Otherwise, stuff that SpamAssassin culls into this folder won’t be seen by the user. Set up this folder to synchronize along with the InBox so the users can see when messages arrive.

Hope this helps… Also thanks to the authors of WebMin and VirtualMin. Good job folks. As a suggestion, you may want to give the above configuration items consideration when modifying your install script so as to help out poor helpless noobs like me… thanks again.

David LeNorman