Q: Can not receive email, password not accepted by server

I've had IMAP-UW login problems with Apple Mail since the GM seed release.

I sat down and diagnosed the problem, last week, but never took the time to come up with a solution.

Tonight, I sat down, and with a high dose of cafine, solved the issue for me, hope this will help others...

First, the "bug".

     As others have determined, Apple has changed the login in sequence from using "tag LOGIN userid userpassword" to "tag AUTHENTICATE PLAIN `base64 encoded login data'"

     If you follow the RFC's, `base64 encoded login data' parameter is an encoded string with three fields as follows; `authzid\0authcid\password'

     The problem, is that, Apple has choosen to supply an empty "authzid" field, so you get a `\0authcid\0password' AUTHENTICATE parameter string instead.

     This in and of it's self is legal according to the RFC's, however, this exercises the bug in IMAP-UW

Second, the "fix"

     The patch is a one line change, and all is well again!

     Note! This is against imapd-2007e (version 404)

--- ./imapd/imapd.c     2008-11-18 12:46:59.000000000 -0600

+++ ../../../imap-2007e/src/imapd/imapd.c       2011-07-22 00:46:57.000000000 -0500

@@ -2141,7 +2141,7 @@

                                /* must be at least one BASE64 char */

   else if (!base64mask[*ret]) return NIL;

   else {                       /* quick and dirty */

-    while (base64mask[*s++]);  /* scan until end of BASE64 */

+    while (base64mask[*s]) s++;        /* scan until end of BASE64 */

     if (*s == '=') ++s;                /* allow up to two padding chars */

     if (*s == '=') ++s;

   }

Recompile, and restart your imapd processes, and your good to go.

If you're using Password for Authentication in Advanced tab, use MD5 Challenge-Response instead of Password. I tried it and it solved my problem.

Jacques,

With P&T Lux, you can use imap instead of pop to receive your emails. I tried it this morning and it works very well.

When you create your P&T account specifiy imap and use imap.pt.lu instead of pop and pop.pt.lu

smtp stays the same.

Philippe   

Happy for you - nothing suggested so far has worked for me.

Guys an Apple engineer has just contacted me to get some information about my email account settings and send it out to a taskforce dealing with our problems.

This person was extremely helpful and understanding about the inconveniences we are experiencing. He feels confident that a solution will be found very shortly and solved with a software upadate to be released in the coming days.

I was disappointed about Apple, but this kind of service makes in my opinion, most of the issue right. Now I hope in a quick solution.

Well I'm glad to hear they are working on it.

It's brutal, my work heavily relies on email and now I have to use webmail. And as we all know, you don't get notifications with webmail.

Considering how many professionals rely on email - this should be #1 on their to-do list.

Finally got past the first tier (why does Apple waste their time and ours going through non-techies who haven't got a clue - they even insisted I reload the software before they would escalate - why should they client have to waste more time) - once I finally got second tier at least had some 'intelligence' and first thoughts would have a solution within an hour. Sadly the fix is not that straight forward and will be updated Monday. They clearly know it is an issue, when it is fixed is another question!

Massive own goal Apple - hardly feel that this is a robust 'business system' - one Mac user who can't wait to get back to a more reliable Windows system for his business!

Hello Zulu357.

your solution works very well (och zu Veianen)

Thanks a lot

Hello All;

I have been very fruatated as well... but after having tried what I thought it was all options I have tried the following:

• I kept untouched the POP troubled email
• I have added a new mail account but instead of POP I have set it as IMAP

and it WORKED.....! now I have again my mail working.

I hope this will work as well with some of you.

Cheers

Just tried IMAP but to no effect on mine (thanks anyway) - is there any settings you are changing in comparison to normal? Tried nearly everything in the book?

If you are reading this Apple it is a disgraceful the way you treat your clients. The problem is widespread yet there is nothing on the site to acknowledge and provide information on what you are doing about this issue. People say don't rant, but how much time are we losing - least of all emails and potential business (perhaps if we rant Apple might pull its head out of its derrier(!))!! Apple are a company that really could do with a lesson in 'real customer service' - all marketing and no substance!! Admit the bugs, apologise, tell the customer what is happening, and when it'll be fixed - its simple if you really care about us more than your image (I guess which we know what you really care about)!!

Really, Mark, and others, no company, including Apple, is going to "admit" it has a problem until it can reproduce the issue in its own labs and prove to its own satisfaction that the source of the problem is within their product and not a result of misuse by customers, interaction between the product and other software, etc., etc. Remember the Audi accelerator fiasco -- which disappeared as soon as the company put an interlock on the gear shift and brake and thus proved it was the drivers after all? Everyone is blaming Apple here, but no knows that the problem resides in Apple's software (they use a good amount of third-party open source software underneath OS X) nor that the problem may not reside in the server's software. Give them time to find the problem before piling on.

HI.

Thank you for this information.Imap works and resolves the problem.

But there is one disadvantage. You have no possibility to leave the mails on the server

for a later definitive download to your principal computer.

Jacques

Actually, they are aware of the problem, unfortunately debugging and reproducing takes a certain amount of time... which is not reduced by shouting at them.

Give them at least some time to resolve the problem.

Could be some change in parsing the mail protocol, but can also be a file system layout conversion of the way they store their mailboxes in Lion as opposed to storing them as they did in Snow Leopard.

Mark, they have called several customers themselves to find the rootcause the problem (yes, that included me.).

Being a software developer myself I can tell you that there is probably a whole process in place they need to go through before they can get the fix out in the field.

Since it is a new OS release they also have to take into account other bugfixes which will all come in one big bundle the next couple of days (Releasing them all seperately will most likely not happen.).

BTW using third party software (open source or not) doesn't make it _not_ their problem, but they are definitely working on it.

Tim

Imap in general doesn't take emails off the server, it leaves them there so you can download them through pop later or access them through webmail. It's just syncing them to your email client.

At least gmail's imap works that way...