I've been tearing my hair out over this one. All I'm trying to do is to get perl to do what I can already do by telnetting to my mail server over port 25 and entering in all the details manually.

When I telnet in, I use auth login and then enter the username and password in Base64. This works fine.

Now I want to get perl to do the same, so after much consultation of CPAN and throwing away Mail::Mailer as useless, I wrote the following (sanitised, of course):

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
#
use strict;
use Net::SMTP;

my $DEBUG = 1;

my $smtp;
$smtp = Net::SMTP->new('mymailserver.net', Hello => "myotherserver.net
+", Debug => 1,);
die "Couldn't connect to server" unless $smtp;
print "Server connection opened\n";

$smtp->auth('myuser', 'test123');

...

[download]

When I run this, I get the following:

Net::SMTP>>> Net::SMTP(2.31)
Net::SMTP>>>   Net::Cmd(2.29)
Net::SMTP>>>     Exporter(5.58)
Net::SMTP>>>   IO::Socket::INET(1.29)
Net::SMTP>>>     IO::Socket(1.29)
Net::SMTP>>>       IO::Handle(1.25)
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 220 mymailserver.net ESMTP Exim 4.60 Mon,
+ 20 Jul 2009 15:08:52 +0100
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)>>> EHLO myotherserver.net
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250-mymailserver.net Hello myotherserver.
+net [10.1.2.70]
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250-SIZE 20971520
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250-PIPELINING
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250-STARTTLS
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 250 HELP
Server connection opened
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)>>> AUTH PLAIN bXl1c2VybXl1c2VydGVzdDEyMw==
Net::SMTP=GLOB(0xa6fd440)<<< 535 Incorrect authentication data

...

[download]

The problem seems to be twofold:

  1. Instead of using AUTH LOGIN, it's using AUTH PLAIN
  2. The Base64 string contains the username twice, then the password, which is wrong.

Is this a bug in Net::SMTP, or a problem with my mail server, or something else?

In reply to Net::SMTP auth login fails - passes in username twice! by m0thr4

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