I am once again trying to install and configure Postfix. I am following a book, but the book isn't very helpful in the chapter about SASL. So I followed this page:

http://www.proulx.com/~bob/doc/HOWTO-Postfix-SASL.html

I made some progress with it. Postfix now responds on port 587 and I finally got "250-AUTH DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 NTLM" in the telnet conversation.

I configured claws mail with my login and password as provided by that page. But authentication failed. Here is claws' log:


(Note: the hashes are made up, I didn't paste the actual ones.)

Known problems:

1) I was expecting to use DIGEST-MD5, but that option is greyed out in claws, so I selected CRAM-MD5. Is that a problem?

2) There is a box that contains this:
Add etc/sasldb2 to FILES in /etc/init.d/postfix:

I didn't do that part because I couldn't figure out where that addition would go. If I understand it correctly, I am supposed to delete the first line and introduce the second, but I couldn't find the first line. Well, the page clearly predates Debian 5/Lenny (it says so right there) and I am running Debian 9/Stretch. That is, the page is outdated. Should I still take that step, and how exactly?

3) The following box, also containing diff editing notation, I didn't follow that one either because the lines to be changed do not exist.

I don't want to authenticate with pop3 or dovecot. I want smtp authentication to be entirely independent. That page says it is possible, so I just want to finish this configuration. Can someone here please help?

TIA

Maybe try the Debian wiki:
https://wiki.debian.org/PostfixAndSASL

You really should use dovecot though.

I read that, it's an obvious source. But it's for plain login. I don't want plain login.

So what DO you want?
And what mechanism are you using?
Where is your authentication data?
I'm assuming you've also read the obvious postfix documentation, which is quite comprehensive.

I said what I want in the original post.

I don't want to authenticate with pop3 or dovecot. I want smtp authentication to be entirely independent.

My authentication data can be seen in the MUA log I also pasted in the original post.

I've been reading Postfix documentation, an O'Reilly book and two "tutorial" pages. If it's supposed to be so easy, how come I had no replies?

Nobody really knows how to do these things. They are made too complicated so all recipes end up being broken.

Why?
Independent of what?No, that is just the client's session log.
Again, what authentication method are you trying to use?
saslauthd limits you to PLAIN or LOGIN so presumably you are using sql, sasldb or ldapdb - which is it?
Where is you user/pass data stored?You clearly DID get a reply, no?Mail servers are complex systems, but a basic understanding of the concepts and a bit of reading comprehension is all you really need to be successful.