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Open Kernel Labs Blog
January 03, 2009
IMAP passwords in Android
I’ve been setting up my new Android phone and found out that the password handling code in the IMAP client doesn’t work so well with my Dovecot IMAP server.
Now, I really can’t be bothered working out which side is doing it wrong, but Dovecot expects your password to be contained in double-quotes if it contains special character. (No, I don’t precisely know what those characters are!). And, of course, if you are double-quoing the string, you then need to escape and double-quotes in the password itself. Now, like I said, no idea of this is the correct (according to the standard) behaviour, but it is the behaviour that I have to deal with, since I can’t mess with the server. Of course, the Android IMAP client doesn’t do this escaping, and so you get an error message indicating your username / password is incorrect. Frustratingly, the error message doesn’t pass on the information from the server giving detail on exactly what the problem is so you are left guessing.
Anyway, it turns out if you manually escape the password that you give to the Android email client things work fine. Of course, the SMTP server doesn’t need this escaping, and fails if you do have it, so you need to type in a different, unescaped, password for SMTP. Fun and games!
Looking at the lastest source code for Android, it looks like this has been properly fixed, so hopefully and upgrade to the Cupcake branch in the near future will solve the problem.
Posted by Benno Leslie on January 03 at 01:37 PM
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About Benno Leslie:
Benno Leslie, Vice President of Engineering at OK Labs holds a dual degree in Computer Engineering (with first-class honors) and Arts from UNSW. While at work, Benno does his best to avoid the marketing department, while he oversees a team of lead engineers and the customer support organization. When summer hits, the rugby field comes calling and Benno is either tackling others, out cycling, or letting loose at concerts.