Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : SMTP Authentication not working correctly (almost seems like its not at all)

[darrylromano]

Hey Folks,

about 3 weeks ago, my clients started noticing that they could not send email anymore.

Everytime they tried, it would ask them for there login/password over and over, but never send.

So i decided to do some research to resolve this for them.

What i have determined is the following...

1.) pop before smtp seems to work (sometimes.. not always!)
2.) Adding outgoing server authentication in outlook to "same credentials as incoming server" results in the server thinking that a bad username/password has been sent, and it will keep asking you over and over again until you cancel out.


What i have tried to do was, reset the password (i know the passwords are correct because i can receive with the password with no problem).

if i disable login info for outgoing servers, then it sometimes works.. i see the relayhosts file being populated, but not always instantly.

From what it seems, is that, smtp authentication seems to be missing from exim on the latest cpanel....

can anyone help with this? i always thought cpanel had free support, but it seems as though i have to go through my server host, who wants to charge me $89/h to work on it.

any help would be greatful!

cheer!
Darryl

[ragubhat]

You need professional help, get a dedicated 'mail plan' from a tech support company. There may be many related issues to fix, you are liable to goof up things.

[markfrompf]

Originally Posted by ragubhat

You need professional help

That's priceless! You saw it right here on WHT, folks!

In response to the subject, I agree - Seek a pro.

[darrylromano]

thanks for the help.......


figured i'd at least get a direction.

[lamerfreak]

Does your server list AUTH at all in the capabilities?

If it's actually missing from the config, I can't recommend much. You can walk through a basic SMTP authentication session fairly easily (well...) though, just to replicate.

[darrylromano]

250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN


yuppers.

I was just doing some more testing, and it turns out, that no matter what auth info you use, it thinks its bad.

but if i do straight smtp without auth, it works. so technically my server is open right now. not good

[lamerfreak]

If your server was completely open, I'm sure it would be detected... where are you testing from? Behind/within it? It may just trust your own network.

If any auth is bad, then the config/link to the auth information is bad. I'm not sure how exim handles that, though. I'd expect something more verbose in the logs if that were the case?

[darrylromano]

hey folks,

fixed the problem.

my configuration is, that Cpanel is running on a VM on a linux host. both the host and guest have smtp enabled.

when I put an iptables rule in my hsot to redirect port 2525 to 25, it was grabbing the traffic that was meant for cpanel as well.

yay. fixed the iptables rule and now its good.

cheers!

[lamerfreak]

Glad you got it. I was going in a whole different direction, obviously.