205376 - Unable to get new mail

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 205003

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

Description

[Leo H]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507

In Mozilla 1.4beta, I am no longer able to get new email from my POP mail
server.  When I launch Mozilla1.3, everything is fine, I'm able to get new mail.
When I launch Mozilla1.4beta, I keep getting "The PASS command did not succeed.
Mail server pop.hbs.edu responded: incorrect password or account name".
It doesn't matter if I am asked to type in the password or if I have the "save
my password" feature enabled.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to check email from Mozilla 1.4 beta


Actual Results:  
Get "invalid password" error, as described above.


Sending mail (using an smtp server) works fine.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you please create a pop3 log ?

doesn't block development

Comment 2

[Leo H]

Can you tell me how to create a pop3 log?

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

sure :
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html

Comment 4

[Leo H]

Attachment: Mozilla1.3 log

log of Mozilla 1.3 Mail use - works as expected.

Comment 5

[Leo H]

Attachment: Mozilla 1.4 beta log

Mozilla 1.4 beta Mail log.  Got "invalid password" error.

Comment 6

[Leo H]

Attachment: Mozilla 1.3 log (again, after trying with 1.4)

Mozilla 1.3 Mail log again - after using Mozilla 1.4 beta, quiting, and trying
1.3 again - to demonstrate that 1.3 still works as expected even after 1.4
failed.

Comment 7

[Leo H]

Thank you, above are the logs.
I first set my password in Mozilla 1.3, and set it to "remember my password" -
to make sure its not just me mistyping my password.  (However, note that in the
past I also tried to type in my password every time and also got same results).
The first log is a Mozilla 1.3 log - start up Mozilla 1.3 and check Mail - works.
Then its a Mozilla 1.4 log - quit 1.3, start 1.4beta, check Mail, denied.
Then its Mozilla 1.3 log again - quit 1.4beta, start 1.3 again, check Mail,
works again.

I would love to switch to Mozilla 1.4, but am not able to until this problem is
resolved.
Thank you for your attention!

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

This looks like a cram-md5 server bug.
You see this only with 1.4b because we added cram-md5 in 1.4b.

The server sends this :
0[2341c0]: RECV: +OK methods supported: 
0[2341c0]: RECV: LOGIN
0[2341c0]: RECV: PLAIN
0[2341c0]: RECV: CRAM-MD5
0[2341c0]: RECV: DIGEST-MD5
0[2341c0]: RECV: NTLM

The server sends that it supports cram-md5 and Mozilla wants to use this
authentification :
0[2341c0]: SEND: AUTH CRAM-MD5

but it seems to fail with cram-md5 :
0[2341c0]: RECV: -ERR incorrect password or account name

Comment 9

[Leo H]

Should I notify our server administrators?  
If so, could you please let me know what I should tell them?
If this bug will likely affect users of the next Netscape release as well,
they'll surely want to know about it ASAP.

Anything I could do on my side to get around this (a preference value or something)?

Thank you!

Comment 10

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

I cc'ed the developers to be sure that this is a server bug.

btw: you see in the 1.3 log that Mozilla use a different authentification :
0[2341f8]: SEND: AUTH LOGIN

And there is currently no way to disable cram-md5 auth but it would be a good idea 
(IMHO) 

Comment 11

[Christian Eyrich]

Since this kind of bug has been filed so often in the last days I guess we
really should make it switchable or at least implement a fallback.

I still hope there's a bug in my code but I have no clue where. But as checks
with other CRAM-MD5-aware clients show it's the server in the most times.
Evangelize is always good but until the admins react the users can't get their
mail and that's not acceptable of course.

But for the sake of completeness, Leo, could you test getting mail with one of
the clients with CRAM-MD5 in the POP3 column (and activated in the application)
from this list:
http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/mel/SASL_ClientRef.html (I'd use The Bat
because it's quite easy to use).

Comment 12

[Leo H]

Attachment: Bat! Account settings that cause same error

Bat! got my mail at first (with default settings), but then I changed the
Account Transport setting as shown in this attachment, and then got the same
error that Mozilla got.
It would be great if Mozilla
a) has this MD5-CRAM protocol as an option the way Bat! does 
and/or
b) tries to fall back to another protocol if the above one fails (possibly also
optional behavior?)

Let me know if there is anything else I can do.
If this does sound like a server bug - I want to let our server admin know
about it, so that they could possibly try to get it fixed.

Thanks!

Comment 13

[Christian Eyrich]

Thanks, Leo, for your fast answer and your test.

Yes, this sounds to me like a server bug (like bug 2005003). There seem to be
not few admins with problems regarding CRAM-MD5.
To let the admin know about this is always a good idea. I can't say what is
wrong or might be wrong, but if you say them, that more than one client fails
with their server, they should believe this and do investigations by themself.

There's not much you can do apart from getting in contact with your servers
admin and maybe testing the problem with just another client from the list just
to be really sure.

I'll look what option to implement.
I'm no friend of how KMail or Bat! let the user choose the authentication. Users
shouldn't be confronted by such stuff. But since at least with APOP one checkbox
will come, even a little bit of interaction should be reasonable.

Comment 14

[Leo H]

Thanks, Christian - I will let our admin know.
I appreciate your point regarding the user interface option - especially since
this is due to a server problem.  However, at the very minimum, it would be
great if you could implement a hidden preference that could be set by modifying
the user.prefs file.  That would at least enable users like myself to be able to
use the latest Mozilla version.
Thanks!

Comment 15

[Christian Eyrich]

Patch to this problem has been submitted in bug 205003.

Comment 16

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

marking as dupe because there is a workaround now.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 205003 ***

Comment 17

[esther]

verified dup

Comment 18

[esther]

Leo, the duplicate bug was fixed on 5-13-2003 could you take a build with the
fix and to see if it works for you, then could you please comment in bug 205003
or this bug, Thanks