Madasafish changed password now unable to access email

[#1]

I can access my Madasafish mail account via Web Mail and Claws Mail but am unable to access it via either Thunderbird, Geary or K-Nine mail clients. Before changing my Madasafish account password I also used Thunderbird and K-Nine mail clients. Subsequent to the password change I have had to alter Claws Mail IMAP login authentication from automatic to LOGIN to get it working. That level of control is not available in the other mail clients that I can find.

Claws Mail IMAP authentication methods are; Automatic (my original setting which uses Plain text), Plain text, CRAM-MDS, ANONYMOUS, GSSAPI, DIGEST-MPS, SCRAM-SHA-1, PLAIN AND LOGIN (my current and working option).

Why changing my account password should necessitate a change in my email client other than the password is beyond my level of understanding.

regards

Richard

[#2]

Hi Richard.

Your account password is generally the same as your e-mail password, so changing this can mean that the password that your mail client has stored to connect to our servers is invalid.

As you've got 3 mail clients you can't use your e-mail service on it's probably best to tackle them one at a time. Starting with Thunderbird, can you try removing the account from there and re-adding it?

Feel free to post up screenshots showing the process you go through when recreating the account and we'll double check to make sure you got the right settings. Make sure you don't include any personal info in the screenshots.

[#3]

As you suggested I have gone back to my Thunderbird my client and have switcedh on logging for the IMAP protocol to see what is going on under the proverbial bonnet. The log from an attempting to access to my Madasfsh mail account is in the attached file. My version of Thunderbird is version 60.6.1 release date 25/03/2019

From the log you can see that:

Thunderbird attaches to the mail server, so no internet connectivity problem.

It then lets the server know the login types it supports.

First it attempts to use old style IMAP login =

When that fails tries old style again which obviously fails.

The server has responded "NO Login failed" which equates to a bad user id/password combo.

When Thunderbird then asks for a new password I then cancel the connection.

When changing my password I only made it longer and did not add any Unicode 'funny' characters.

Thunderbird unlike Claws does not as far as I can see, allow you to set the IMAP authentication method you want to use. Maybe hidden away in some configuration file?

Why it does not try an alternative login method such as new style LOGIN?

Does anyone know what IMAP authentication methods Madasafish does support?

regards

Richard

[#4]

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@Jubby wrote:

Hi @RoL,

For visibility on this thread, I have included all the correct settings below.

Incoming IMAP & POP server: mail.madasafish.com

Port: 143 / 110

Outgoing SMTP server: mail.madasafish.com

Port: 25 or 587

Username: Full email address

Password: Account password or additional mailbox password

SSL: Off for both incoming & outgoing mail server

NOTE: Elsewhere the SMTP server for Madasafish has been specified as smtp.madasafish.com - has there been a change (at least) in usage syntax (for they resolve to the same IP address at present)?

[#5]

The settings you describe are the ones which I am using, mail and port numbers. mail.madasafish.com and smtp.madasafish.com are synonymous and merely links to the Plusnet mail system. (forget the destination.

What is going wrong with the Thunderbird mail conversation is that it tries the old 'login' method which fails and then as a fallback once again tries the old 'login' command and not the new LOGIN command. With Claws mail I can force it to use the new LOGIN IMAP authentication method.

With Thunderbird mail there may be some under the bonnet method of achieving the same functionality. At the moment the Thunderbird mail client is controlled by the responses from the Plusnet mail server.

The only thing I changed which sank my email clients was my Madasafish account password which I replicated in my working email clients. After which they stopped working and none of their other parameters. It is only by setting my Claws mail IMAP authentication from Automatic i.e set by the mail server to LOGIN that it then works.

Something more than my changing my password has changed which is either Plusnet's mail server or my email client's software as a result of a software update or someone has made a change to the mail server's operating parameters.

regards

Richard