[Love Calm Quiet]

Jaguar 10.2.6

Off & on, unpredictably (on various broadband internet connections ) .mail will be unable to authenticate my user id / password:

"The SMTP server “smtp.mac.com” rejected the password for user “lovecalmquiet”
Please re-enter your password, or cancel."

Re-entering PROPER password doesn't work. Repeated tries: continued rejection. An hour later (usually) or so it'll be happening. Is .mail "down" at these times? All other web connections are fine.

Wish it gave me a more useful diagnostic - that diagnostic line about my password being wrong is a crock

Anybody with similar experiences? explanations?

[Macpilot]

I have been asking about this for a while now, and I have decided that it is the fault of Mail. It has occurred on different Macs, different ISPs, and different connection types, including dial-up, DSL, and Cable. This problem has never happened with other email clients.

I hope Apple gets on this because I have only found one other email client that comes close to the nice interface and Address Book sync that Mail offers.

Some things to try to fix this that others have suggested:

Keychain Access: make sure there are no duplicate passwords

Login: don't have Mail automatically launch at login (apparently the Keychain will not load in time to check your mail that quick, and you get the error)

Rebuild the mailbox

Dump the "com.apple.mail.plist" file

Keychain First Aid:

http://kbase.info.apple.com/viewdoc....ID=KC.107234_E

I have tried a new email app called "Gyaz Mail":

http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16332

It is $18 and might take Mail's place if Apple can't fix this on Panther.

For what it's worth....NONE of these things have helped me....but some people insist that there is nothing wrong with Mail. I disagree.

[NeXTLoop]

You guys are both right. They're definitely something wrong with Mail. It has far too many bugs and problems. I personally have a problem with it constantly telling me that the connection with my POP server is refused.

I know there's nothing wrong with the POP server because I administer it. And Eudora doesn't have the problem. But numerous times during the day Mail just craps out and says that the connection was refused, or that it can't find it, or something like that. I'm basically waiting to see how Panther's Mail stacks up. If it doesn't fix some of these glaring problems, its back to Eudora for me.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Unfortunately, I find Eudora just about as depressing.

Don't you just love their user-friendly setup panels? How mac-like a process. Just what's needed to wean newbies away from AOL

But don't really understand email proceses at the level of the significance of all those acronyms SMTP, POP, etc. And may it be possible to use Eudora to access my .mac account when .mail is sukking bad?

Thanks for the other tips on trashing & on Gyaz Mail. I may look that way.

Meanwhile, I'm on the road and it's been 24hrs and .mail still insists it's never heard of my password.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
Unfortunately, I find Eudora just about as depressing.

Don't you just love their user-friendly setup panels? How mac-like a process. Just what's needed to wean newbies away from AOL

But don't really understand email proceses at the level of the significance of all those acronyms SMTP, POP, etc. And may it be possible to use Eudora to access my .mac account when .mail is sukking bad?

Thanks for the other tips on trashing & on Gyaz Mail. I may look that way.

Meanwhile, I'm on the road and it's been 24hrs and .mail still insists it's never heard of my password.

Ok, we've got fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between .Mac, .Mac's email, and Mail.app going on here.

.Mac is the name of the service which includes email, iDisk, etc.
.mail isn't anything.
Mail.app does admittedly have problems sometimes with passwords (but see fixes above). When your account gets confused, it's often easiest to use the "Manage SMTP servers" script in /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/ to delete any extraneous SMTP servers from the list. Make sure your passwords, etc. is correct in Mail's preferences etc.

But in general confusing problems on Mail.app's end with problems with .Mac's service does nothing to solve the problem and will only get you a lot of "works fine for me" responses.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
Jaguar 10.2.6

Off & on, unpredictably (on various broadband internet connections ) .mail will be unable to authenticate my user id / password:

"The SMTP server “smtp.mac.com” rejected the password for user “lovecalmquiet”
Please re-enter your password, or cancel."

Re-entering PROPER password doesn't work. Repeated tries: continued rejection. An hour later (usually) or so it'll be happening. Is .mail "down" at these times? All other web connections are fine.

Wish it gave me a more useful diagnostic - that diagnostic line about my password being wrong is a crock

Anybody with similar experiences? explanations?

Whoa... is it for sending mail you're having the problems?

Note, you are NOT supposed to use the .Mac SMTP server *unless* your ISP doesn't provide an SMTP server. Most ISPs these days block external SMTP servers, due to spamming issues. So your ISP may be who's causing this issue. Use your ISP's (e.g. smtp.earthlink.net) SMTP server, and not the .Mac one.

This is documented, if you read the instructions :-P

If you're having problems CHECKING email, that's another issue. But if it's only for SENDING then it's likely not at all related to .Mac, it's an artifact of your ISP's configuration.

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
You guys are both right. They're definitely something wrong with Mail. It has far too many bugs and problems. I personally have a problem with it constantly telling me that the connection with my POP server is refused.

I know there's nothing wrong with the POP server because I administer it.

I wouldn't just assume that...

And Eudora doesn't have the problem. But numerous times during the day Mail just craps out and says that the connection was refused, or that it can't find it, or something like that.

You do realise that there's a very big difference between those two things, right? And that if it was the latter, it couldn't possibly be Mail's fault?

I'm basically waiting to see how Panther's Mail stacks up. If it doesn't fix some of these glaring problems, its back to Eudora for me.

I don't think you should just give up in this situation. If you run a mail server that people rely upon, debug it! Speak POP to the server from the computer Mail doesn't work from, get a raw dump of what SMTP commands Mail says give it a 'refused connection', etc. Otherwise, other people who want to use Mail with your server will just have the same problems in future.

..of course, if it's just a personal thing, feel free to use whatever you want and whatever requires the least effort

[Diggory Laycock]

Mail has real problems authenticating with SMTP - It appears to depend on your network location - When I am in London all my accounts use Password authentication (on several different servers), When I go to the Country I have to turn it off for all of them. My brother Uses Entourage and has none of these problems - I can Only hope that Mail.app in PanFire fixes this.

[Uday's Carcass]

I remember the heady days when mail.app was called mail.crap. hahah.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
I wouldn't just assume that...



You do realise that there's a very big difference between those two things, right? And that if it was the latter, it couldn't possibly be Mail's fault?



I don't think you should just give up in this situation. If you run a mail server that people rely upon, debug it! Speak POP to the server from the computer Mail doesn't work from, get a raw dump of what SMTP commands Mail says give it a 'refused connection', etc. Otherwise, other people who want to use Mail with your server will just have the same problems in future.

..of course, if it's just a personal thing, feel free to use whatever you want and whatever requires the least effort

Believe me, I've troubleshot this thing like crazy. As for saying that Mail was the other fellow's problem... I wasn't. I was just saying that Mail has its share of problems, and could very well be at least part of his problem.

You should take a look over at the Apple Discussion Board about Mail. I've been working with a number of people over there trying to get fixes for some of Mail's more glaring weaknesses/bugs.