For those of you who wanted to know what the solution was here is a detailed note for your info. This will allow you to do authenticated smtp over ssl with the standard exim just using pam. Pam is an acronym for Pluggable Authentication Modules. You can use pam with a standard linux distribution for example which means that you can have smtp authentication with pam without downloading more software.

• Exim 4.x

To have smtp authentication available in exim, you need to make sure that it is compiled into the exim binary before you configure it. The following settings need to be set in the Makefile before you compile exim.

AUTH_PLAINTEXT=yes
SUPPORT_TLS=yes
TLS_LIBS=-lssl -lcrypto
TLS_LIBS=-L/usr/local/openssl/lib -lssl
TLS_INCLUDE=-I/usr/local/openssl/include/
SUPPORT_PAM=yes
EXTRALIBS=-lpam

Make sure you have the following in the exim config file

tls_advertise_hosts = *
tls_certificate = /usr/lib/courier-imap/share/imapd.pem

(note: I am using the certificate that courier installs for itself, you will probably wish to point to your own certificate)

auth_advertise_hosts = ${if def:tls_in_cipher {*}{}}

(This means only connections over ssl will be offered authentication, you do not need this but we do not want users sending their password over unencrypted connections so we use it)

begin authenticators

PLAIN:
   driver = plaintext
   server_prompts = :
   # Check password in $3 for user in $2
   server_condition = "${if pam{$auth2:${sg{$auth3}{:}{::}}}}"
   server_set_id = $auth2

LOGIN:
   driver = plaintext
   server_prompts = Username:: : Password::
   # Check password in $2 for user in $1
   server_condition = "${if pam{$auth1:${sg{$auth2}{:}{::}}}}"
   server_set_id = $auth1

(Any colons in the password need to be doubled or such passwords cannot be verified because the colons are interpreted as list separators.)

Also I have exim run as group exim this group needs read access on

/etc/shadow
/usr/lib/courier-imap/share/imapd.pem
/etc/pam.d/exim

auth        required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_env.so
auth        sufficient    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok
auth        required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so
account     required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so
password    required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_cracklib.so retry=3 type=
password    sufficient    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok use_authtok md5shadow
password    required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so
session     required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_limits.so
session     required      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so

/etc/shadow and /etc/pam.d/exim must be readable by the exim group (the group your exim daemon runs as) otherwise you will get the error

535 Incorrect authentication data (set_id='userid')

With the above we are able to do authenticated smtp using standard out of the box exim and the standard pam modules that come with linux. So no need for sassl authd or pam_exim or anything else, it all just works.

Hope this is cluefull to those of you trying to do the same.

Ron

I found this helpful, but suggest that other readers should consider two points re /etc/pam.d/exim file above:

Is null_ok right for your system (Do you want to allow accounts with no password to relay mail)?

Is password change processing appropriate for exim on your system?

Ken

Under FreeBSD the /etc/master.password file (containing encrypted passwords, like Linux's /etc/shadow) is unreadable for Exim when authentication occurs; to make master.password readable for the mail group is considered a security risk. If you run a POP3 server (I run popa3d from inetd), you can authenticate using the security/pam_pop3 port. Exim's configuration is same as above. Example of /etc/pam.d/exim (two lines):

auth required /usr/local/lib/pam_pop3.so hostname=localhost info pwprompt=Password: timeout=5
account required pam_permit.so

The second line isn't mentioned in the pam_pop3 documentation, but without it you'd get an obscure "PAM error: error in service module".

CategoryHowTo HowTo