I'm running dovecot 2.2.14 on Archlinux. I've been using it with the isync syncing utility for quite some time with no problems, using the LOGIN authentication mechanism. Recently Isync was updated to support PLAIN, and I'm having trouble moving to that. The authenticate string that isync is sending is not the one that dovecot is expecting. I suspect this is because of how I have virtual users set up on my machine. This is a personal laptop, no other users, and so I didn't want to go through the rigmarole of creating more system users just for mail accounts. I also wanted everything stored under my home directory. So my dovecot config looks like this: # 2.2.14: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf # OS: Linux 3.16.4-1-ARCH i686 auth_verbose = yes disable_plaintext_auth = no info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot-info.log log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log mail_plugins = " fts fts_lucene" passdb { args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/passwd driver = passwd-file } plugin { fts = lucene fts_autoindex = yes fts_lucene = whitespace_chars=@. } protocols = imap ssl = no userdb { args = uid=eric gid=users home=/home/eric/.mail/%d/%n username_format=%u default_fields = mail=maildir:/home/eric/.mail/%d/%n/mail driver = static } My /etc/dovecot/passwd looks like this: eric at ericabrahamsen.net:{PLAIN}password1 eric at paper-republic.org:{PLAIN}password2 When isync tries to log into the local dovecot using PLAIN, it sends the base64-encoded version of this string: eric at paper-republic.org\0eric\0password2 With my current dovecot config, telnet experimentation shows that dovecot will accept either of these two: \0eric at paper-republic.org\0password2 eric at paper-republic.org\0eric at paper-republic.org\0password2 Ie, either with or without the authorization ID, just like it says at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Debugging/Authentication Given that I'm unlikely to be able to change how isync sends the string (and that it's really doing the right thing), are there alterations I can make to my dovecot config to get it to accept the authenticate string that isync is sending? Ideally, can I do that without having to set up system users? I've already tried using the other fields in the passwd file, putting "eric" and "eric at paper-republic.org" into the UID fields, just in case. No dice. Thanks in advance for any advice! Eric