Issue Plesk 12.0.8 incorrectly generating /etc/postfix/sasl/smtpd.conf

[johnrdorazio]

I haven't been succeeding in connecting to my mail server using an imap client (I'm trying to use gmail app on Android to connect to my mail server via imap), but I have just found the error and therefore the very simple solution, as indicated on this forum: https://adeelejaz.com/blog/smtp-authorization-does-not-work-on-plesk-11/.

Checking my mail log I found this error:
Dec 21 20:17:23 vps94844 postfix/smtpd[32304]: warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory
Dec 21 20:17:23 vps94844 postfix/smtpd[32304]: warning: SASL authentication failure: Password verification failed
Dec 21 20:17:23 vps94844 postfix/smtpd[32304]: warning: unknown[151.68.132.160]: SASL PLAIN authentication failed: generic failure

I am using Ubuntu server and my smtpd.conf is located at /etc/postfix/sasl/smtpd.conf.
Checking the contents of this file I see:
pwcheck_method: auxprop saslauthd
auxprop_plugin: plesk
saslauthd_path: /postfix/private/plesk_saslauthd
mech_list: DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN
sql_engine: intentionally disabled
log_level: 4

Voilà, saslauthd_path is incomplete! I corrected this error just so:
pwcheck_method: auxprop saslauthd
auxprop_plugin: plesk
saslauthd_path: /var/spool/postfix/private/plesk_saslauthd
mech_list: DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN
sql_engine: intentionally disabled
log_level: 4

And after reloading postfix, now I can connect from my gmail app to my imap server without any problems.
Obviously, Plesk is not generating correctly the smtpd.conf file. I have even tried to disable mail services completely and re-enable them, delete my mail user accounts and recreate them, switch from roundcube to horde and back again, swith from postfix to qmail and back again... And then I found this error, so clearly the smtpd.conf file is not being generated correctly. I am using Plesk Web Admin Edition version 12.0.8 #96 on Ubuntu Server 14.04.5 LTS.

 

[johnrdorazio]

I find that this is still happening on Plesk Obsidian. I have tried setting the chroot flag to yes on plesk-sasl in the postfix configuration, but it still didn't work with the relative paths. The only way I can get this to work is to set the chroot flag to no and use full paths.

 

[naxomadrid]

yet in 2025 I see the same error.