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Bug 552324 - Evolution will not remember exchange password
Evolution will not remember exchange password
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution-data-server
Classification: Platform
Component: Mailer
2.22.x (obsolete)
Other Linux
: Normal major
: ---
Assigned To: evolution-mail-maintainers
Evolution QA team
evolution[passwords]
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2008-09-15 09:32 UTC by James
Modified: 2010-08-03 09:07 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description James 2008-09-15 09:32:48 UTC
There is a group of Ubuntu users which all seem to be having similar password problems with evolution. The problem appears on the surface to be an issue where Evolution-data-server does not authenticate correctly to a server. Originally it seemed to be purely exchange based accounts but the problem seems to also cause issues with imap and pop3 accounts. In my case the problem occurs as follows. 

We have a password policy with in our organisation. The policy means that we need to update our password every few weeks. I previously had no problems updating the password. I would login to the OWA url and use our password options in the menu to update the password while evolution was closed. I would then restart evolution and I would automatically be prompted for a password. If I clicked the remember password option I would never have to type it again until the next time my password changed. However recently I have started to have problems with this process. Now my system prompts for the password and I get the following on the console that I launched evolution from 

e-data-server-ui-Message: Unable to find password(s) in keyring (Keyring reports: No matching results)
 e-data-server-ui-Message: Key file does not have group 'Passwords-Exchange'
 e-data-server-ui-Message: Unable to find password(s) in keyring (Keyring reports: No matching results)
 e-data-server-ui-Message: Key file does not have group 'Passwords-Exchange'
 (evolution:9661): evolution-mail-WARNING **: Error occurred while existing dialogue active:
 Could not authenticate to server. (Password incorrect?)

The problem is I know the password is right. I have typed it in a text editor and can paste it into the OWA url login prompt without any issues. As soon as I paste it into the evolution password prompt it repeats the question eventually reporting in the console that the password is incorrect. Since updating my password I have been forced to use the OWA interface to check all email as I am consistently blocked from using evolution due to the problems I am reporting. The part that annoys me most is that I know my authentication attempts are working correctly, If I was failing to login as many times as I have then the password policy would have locked my account. I know it is not locked as I can continually login to other servers and services using the same domain username and password combination that evolution claims is incorrect.

I have moved all my gnome folders to backups and restarted everything to "start fresh" and it had noticable effect on the end result... (being denied access). This included my .gnome2 .gnome2-private .Gconf and .Gconfd folders. I even tried removing the .evolution folder which had no effect at all.

The downstream bug report on the Ubuntu launchpad is as follows 

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-data-server/+bug/107974
Comment 1 Udo Rader 2008-10-31 09:24:14 UTC
there is a similar problem in recent Mandriva 2009.0

https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=45020

That said it seems that this problem is not related to exchange but password saving in general.

IMHO this is a major regression for every "ordinary" user.
Comment 2 Berend De Schouwer 2009-04-14 13:09:40 UTC
me too(tm)

Evolution won't save contacts/calendar passwords.  Seahorse doesn't list the contacts/calendar passwords, but it does list imap and other passwords as "imap://...."  It doesn't list my google calendar password (and that doesn't work) -- I haven't setup google mail.

I'm trying to find out if I can add a manual entry to seahorse.
Comment 3 GJahchan 2009-05-04 18:26:29 UTC
I have gmail working fine, but I have been knocking my head against a brick wall trying to get Evolution Exchange Connector to authenticate to OWA to no avail.

Using gnome-keyring-manager I could see that it created an entry in the default keyring, but it left the password blank. I manually entered the correct password then closed and reopened gnome-keyring-manager to make sure it remembered it. The debug log still shows:

(evolution:4090): e-data-server-ui-WARNING **: Unable to find password(s) in keyring (Keyring reports: No matching results)
e-data-server-ui-Message: Unable to find password(s) in keyring (Keyring reports: No matching results)
e-data-server-ui-Message: Key file does not have key 'exchange:__UserID%40domain.com;auth_Basic@mail.domain.com_'

The default keyring does have an entry labeled:

'exchange://UserID%40domain.com;auth_Basic@mail.domain.com/'
over which evolution [/usr/bin/evolution] has read, write and delete rights.

IMAP mailboxes also have entries: 
imap://userid%40domain.com@imap.domain.com with the correct passwords.

Why in the world does evolution correctly handle imap credentials on multiple accounts while failing with OWA credentials *all else being equal*. Same system, same keyring, same binaries. Beats me.
Comment 4 GJahchan 2009-05-04 18:33:08 UTC
BTW, I am running Fedora Core 9 i686 fully updated.

Running:

kernel-2.6.27.21-78.2.41.fc9.i686
evolution-2.22.3.1-1.fc9.i386
evolution-data-server-2.22.3-3.fc9.i386
evolution-help-2.22.3.1-1.fc9.i386
evolution-exchange-2.22.3-1.fc9.i386
evolution-webcal-2.21.92-1.fc9.i386
evolution-mapi-provider-20080905.0-14.1.i386
evolution-bogofilter-2.22.3.1-1.fc9.i386
evolution-sharp-0.16.1.1-2.fc9.i386
beagle-evolution-0.3.8-6.fc9.i386
evolution-spamassassin-2.22.3.1-1.fc9.i386
Comment 5 GJahchan 2009-05-04 20:15:24 UTC
I have set the debug level to 5, washed rinsed and repeated.

After successfully authenticating to OWA, the Exchange Connector is attempting to get the following URL (the underlined part is out of place and causes the request to fail with http error 404:

> GET /exchange/Mailbox.Name//UserID@domain.com/ HTTP/1.1
                             +--------+--------+
                                      |
                                      V
                             Causes http 404 error!
...
and the server responds:
< HTTP/1.1 404 Resource Not Found
...

If I manually enter the same URL in a browser tab:
     https://mail.domain.com/exchange/Mailbox.Name//UserID@domain.com/
I get an error 404, same as in Evolution.

If however I enter in a browser window:
     https://mail.domain.com/exchange/Mailbox.Name/
it opens the Inbox if I was authenticated earlier, or the authentication page followed by the Inbox upon successful auth.

The underlined part above in the URL is preventing Exchange Connector from retrieving e-mail. Is it dynamic or can it be manually tinkered with as a temporary fix?
Comment 6 Matthew Barnes 2009-05-04 20:24:35 UTC
I think this may have been fixed already.  Can you retest with a more recent Evolution version, as we no longer support 2.22.  Evolution 2.26 would be preferable, but 2.24 should be okay too.
Comment 7 GJahchan 2009-05-04 20:38:14 UTC
I searched and not find 2.24 or 2.26 evolution binaries for Fedora Core 9. 2.24 is available for FC10 only, and 2.26 is available for FC11 (still in Beta).

How can I upgrade evolution from 2.22 to 2.24 or 2.26 while remaining on FC9?
Comment 8 Matthew Barnes 2009-05-05 00:45:49 UTC
Probably not feasible.  2.24 will require a bunch of F10 packages.
Comment 9 GJahchan 2009-05-05 02:15:05 UTC
Would compiling from sources work as a last resort?
Comment 10 Matthew Barnes 2009-05-05 03:06:10 UTC
Most likely.  I'd recommend using jhbuild.

http://live.gnome.org/Jhbuild
Comment 11 Udo Rader 2009-05-05 08:27:44 UTC
At least for me the problem has gone away some time ago after upgrading to 2.26. So the problem itself seems to be fixed in more recent versions.
Comment 12 Akhil Laddha 2009-06-23 04:56:58 UTC
Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for with current version 2.26.2 Thanks!
Comment 13 Dave 2010-08-03 09:07:26 UTC
I am experiencing this still with Evolution 2.28.3