247733 - News Authentication error - with 100% correct username / password

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[John Matzavrakos]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: version 0.6 (20040502)

When trying to connect to my university departments' news server, it will not 
let me login to it. (The check for username/auth happens whenever I click 
the "Subscribe" option, to subscribe to a newsgroup).

The username and password are 100% correct, and Outlook Express (my former 
mail client) works perfectly with those. However, I get an "Authentication 
error" in TB 0.6, and have not been able to connect to the server so far.

This happens on the help.comp.lancs.ac.uk academic news server, which is fully 
accessible from the university campus (and could be from the outside world, 
cannot know), BUT still needs username and password authentication to operate.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click 'subscribe' or equivalent button.
2. Input username and password (with the 'remember by password manager' either 
checked or unchecked, does not matter).
3. The error is then reproduced.

Actual Results:  
The error occurred.

Expected Results:  
Display no errors and let me see the list of available newsgroups and/or other 
news-related functions.

I use Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (And had tried with SP2 beta).

Comment 1

[Christian Eyrich]

Please attach us a communications log to get an idea what can be wrong (see
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#nntp how to
create one).

Comment 2

[John Matzavrakos]

Attachment: The communications log requested :)

This is the communications log created, logging NNTP activity with the news
server. I still face the same error, although I hope things havent changed now
that I've moved away from campus and tried this at home. I hope something can
be done about it.

Comment 3

[Christian Eyrich]

Since our build in logging suppresses the password transmission for security
reasons it's always to find the reasons for problems like this.
To be really sure, Mozilla sends out the right password, you'd have to log the
traffic with an external tool like windump and view the log yourself.

But from the log it looks like you checked "Always request authentication when
connecting tho this server" in the server settings for this account, right?
What if you switch this off and try to read/post?

Comment 4

[John Matzavrakos]

Attachment: Second communications log, little changed

The server is made up to request username/password anyway, so the same error
happens. There's another communications log about this. So the odds are that at
THIS specific news server or method of getting news there's a fault with the
password? Weird, since I've seen TB working in other news servers...Hmm.

And I should check to see if it sends the correct password? Interesting.

Comment 5

[Christian Eyrich]

> The server is made up to request username/password anyway, so the same error
> happens.

Ok, could have been that the server only accepts authentication if it first
issued the 480 response. I wanted to be sure this isn't the cause.

> There's another communications log about this. So the odds are that at
> THIS specific news server or method of getting news there's a fault with the
> password? Weird, since I've seen TB working in other news servers...Hmm.
> 
> And I should check to see if it sends the correct password? Interesting.

Yes, somehow finding out what Mozilla sends is one possible way.
But you could also verify that authentication succeeds (or does not) when you
enter the right credentials yourself. Just log in via telnet on the console:

telnet help.comp.lancs.ac.uk 119
Trying 148.88.3.50...
Connected to help.comp.lancs.ac.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 help InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.2.2 13-Dec-1999 ready (posting ok).
LIST
480 Authentication required for command
AUTHINFO user matzavra
381 PASS required
AUTHINFO pass yourpassword

Comment 6

[John Matzavrakos]

I found out that, as expected basically, I have no access to the server when 
outside of the University campus, so Tbird is not at fault at this point.

But, the issue still happened (and I had confirmed that) when I was still on 
campus: There, OExpress worked and fetched the messages, while TB was having 
problems in authorisation once again, for unknown reasons.

Unless someone confirms the bug until September with some other test case, I 
ll be able to provide updated info...on late Sept at least :( . I hope it'll 
be resolved until then.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.