Author Topic: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts  (Read 165 times)

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Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« on: October 05, 2024, 07:10:53 PM »
I have this problem:
I create an account, and from any computer that is an iMac, it does not connect me to the account and even blocks me in the firewall.
If I connect to that account from the same PC, but with Thunderbird, there is no problem.

The log I get is this:
Oct 05 20:05:37 imap-login: Info: Disconnected: Inactivity (auth failed, 1 attempts in 180 secs): user=<usermail>, method=PLAIN, rip=xx.xxx.xxx.xxx, lip=xx.xxx.xxx.xx, TLS, session=<etrKl7xxxxxxPl02k>

And it blocks it.

I've gone around and around, but I can't figure out what's going on.

Any ideas?

Thanks
« Last Edit: October 05, 2024, 07:14:15 PM by Wonder »

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Re: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2024, 09:27:56 PM »
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(auth failed, 1 attempts in 180 secs)
It means the authentication process fails. Your mail application uses wrong username and/or password. It could happen if you specify wrong mail username, password, encryption mechanism, etc.

Currently I recommend you to make sure you use full mailbox name (e.g. address@domain.com) as the mail username and correct password for the mailbox (the login and password are case sensitive).

Additionally, you can find the correct mail settings in the user panel under "Email accounts" --> "Email accounts".

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Re: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2024, 06:11:15 AM »
Sounds like the mac might be using an incompatible encryption algorithm.

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Re: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2024, 11:10:31 AM »
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(auth failed, 1 attempts in 180 secs)
It means the authentication process fails. Your mail application uses wrong username and/or password. It could happen if you specify wrong mail username, password, encryption mechanism, etc.

Currently I recommend you to make sure you use full mailbox name (e.g. address@domain.com) as the mail username and correct password for the mailbox (the login and password are case sensitive).

Additionally, you can find the correct mail settings in the user panel under "Email accounts" --> "Email accounts".

I know he's set the password correctly, the user, I don't know if he's set it completely or not (user@domain.com), I'll tell him to try it.

Indeed, the error he indicates is authentication failure but... he's already configured other accounts in the past, I'm very surprised that he doesn't know how to configure these...

The configuration that appears in user accounts is for "Windows live mail configuration" and I don't know if it would be valid for a Mac...

(I'm quite unfamiliar with the Mac world... I only know that he uses the native Mac application for mail and that his Mac is less than a year old, so it's relatively new).

Sounds like the mac might be using an incompatible encryption algorithm.
It's just what I thought, an incompatible encryption algorithm.
Why? In the past, when I was using an older Mac I had to change the server's "crypto-policies" to:
Code: [Select]
update-crypto-policies --set LEGACYBut that was with an older Mac.
Now I'm using a newer one, I've tried setting it to LEGACY or Default, still having the same problem...

But what algorithm does that Mac use? How to fix it on the server?
That's the question...

Thanks to both of you for your answers.

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Re: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2024, 01:51:05 PM »
If you believe the user set the correct login credentials in the mail application then ask him/her to look for the feature called like "Authentication method". There will be options like "Oauth, NTLM, MD5, Password, etc". Play with it but add the WAN IP address of your user to the temporary whitelist of CSF in order to avoid blocking.

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Re: Strange problem with mac apple mail and new email accounts
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2024, 05:43:32 AM »
The original post indicated that the authentication type was "PLAIN" -- what you would expect. (Apple Mail used to default to APOP back in the POP days, and has at times tried the full gamut of MD5 and other auth methods. I think the defaults are more sane these days...)

But getting back to basics, I always have the user test their credentials with Roundcube. If they can successfully authenticate there, they should be able to get any MUA to work, even Thunderbird and Mac Mail. CWP defaults to the full e-mail address being the user name, so that is always the starting point to check.