Subject: AUTHENTICATE vs. LOGIN

From: "Peter Derr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 97 17:21:29 -0400

I've been trying various IMAP clients with the latest IMAP4.1-BETA and 
all the ones I've tried except for Netscape Communicator use the LOGIN
command (plaintext login with password) which works fine.  

NS Communicator uses the AUTHENTICATE command which, if I read the code
correctly, sends the username and password in BASE64 encoding.  This
never works.  I've been going through this in the debugger and I always
get garbage for the username and password after the decoding by the
rfc822_base64() function, called like this:

    >0  0x1200224a4 in rfc822_base64(src=0x11fffd150="U2ltcGxlMQ==", srcl=12,
    len=0x11fffd130) rfc822.c:1601
    #1  0x12001b820 in imap_responder(challenge=0x140008c18, clen=9, rlen=0x0)
    imapd.c:2674
    #2  0x12005d194 in auth_login_server(responder=0x12001b6fc, argc=2,
    argv=0x11fffff08) auth_log.c:106
    #3  0x12006e568 in mail_auth(mechanism=0x14000fc0f="login",
    resp=0x12001b6fc, argc=2, argv=0x11fffff08) mail.c:3552
    #4  0x1200125f4 in main(argc=2, argv=0x11fffff08) imapd.c:307

Does this work for anyone else on other platforms?  I'm wondering if
this is a porting problem on my platform (Digital UNIX V4.0, little
endian, 64-bit int) or a problem with NS Communicator (I'm running
Communicator PR5 on NT).

Are there any other clients (or any test programs) that use the AUTHENTICATE
command?

Thanks,
Peter

---

From: Peter Derr <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 09:49:34 -0400 ()

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'll try Simeon mail and I'll try 
enabling AUTHENTICATE in mtest.

> endian, 64-bit int) or a problem with NS Communicator (I'm running

I meant to say that Digital UNIX has a 64-bit long (ints are 32 bits).
I was wondering if the size of long or being little endian could have
an effect on the BASE64 encode/decode functions.  Examining the code
didn't reveal any problems.

I'm still wondering if anyone has been able to use NS Communicator PR5
with the latest UW imapd.

Thanks,
Peter

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 08:52:18 -0700 (PDT)

> didn't reveal any problems.

CAC's internal IMAP servers are Digital UNIX based.  We've seen no such
problems.

> with the latest UW imapd.

Very few of us are willing to bother with Communicator.  It is a very broken
IMAP client in many ways.  I consider it to be unusable.

Microsoft recently discovered a new bug in Communicator; if you do not deliver
untagged responses in numerically ascending order, Communicator croaks.  This
is on top of the other bugs in Communicator.