Symptoms
- On a Plesk for Linux server, Postfix is used as a mail server.
- SMTPS connection from Outlook to the Plesk server fails to be established.
- The following errors are found in the fileÂ
/var/log/maillog
:SSL_accept error from unknown[203.0.113.2]: lost connection
lost connection after CONNECT from unknown[203.0.113.2]
plesk postfix/smtpd[6814]: warning: SASL authentication failure: realm changed: authentication aborted
plesk postfix/smtpd[6814]: warning: 203.0.113.2.example.com[203.0.113.2]: SASL DIGEST-MD5 authentication failed: authentication failure - Plaintext authorization is disabled in Postfix:
# cat /etc/postfix/main.cf | grep “smtpd_sasl_security_options”
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noplaintext
Cause
Outlook is not compatible with CRAM-MD5 authentication mechanism.
Resolution
- Connect to the server using SSH.
- Open the fileÂ
/etc/postfix/main.cf
 for editing. - Comment out the following line by putting “#” at its beginning and save the changes:
#smtpd_sasl_security_options = noplaintext
- Restart postfix to apply configuration changes:
# service postfix restart