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Opera M2 and Road Runner

The Problem

The Opera Help Desk recently got a call from a HAL-PC member who had recently signed up for Road Runner.  He had been using Opera and its e-mail client, M2, for several years.  (By the way, He is using Opera 7.23, the most recent stable version).  Now he was having trouble getting it to log on to Road Runner's mail servers. 

He had gotten <barf> © Microsoft® Outlook Express </barf> © to work, but kept getting an "Authentication Failure" pop-up every time he tried to use M2.  He (correctly, it turns out) suspected that the problem was with the authentication method, but when he called Road Runner Tech Support he was told that authentication was "an Opera problem". 

The Solution

We reviewed his M2 setup, poked around Opera on-line Support, and consulted HLUG member & long-time Road Runner user Aaron Estrada.  All confirmed that the default Authenticaion setting, "Auto ...", was the problem — it needed to changed to "Plaintext". 

The Explanation

Aaron says it best, here is an excerpt from his e-mail: 
Here's the fix.

Roadrunner doesn't let email clients hit the server, to check how they authenticate. If the first try craps out, the server closes the connection.

By setting POP authentication to PLAIN-TEXT, the first connection attempt hits properly, and messages are received.

So we changed his POP authentication to Plaintext. 
(We left the SMTP authentication as the default, None). 

The Details

For those of you who want "the gory details", here's how: 

We opened the Account properties dialog for his RR mail account. 
  Mail | Manage accounts | Edit  

In the 2nd tab, Servers, there are 2 identical sections: 
  Incoming POP server and Outgoing SMTP server. 
Each has 5 lines: 

The default for  Authentication  is  Auto (AUTH CRAM-MD5), which doesn't work.  We changed this to Plaintext, as instructed, and problem solved. 

More Details

For those of you who want "the even goryier details", here's a simulation of the Account properties dialog (for his RR mail account) Servers tab: 

   Incoming POP Server  
 Server  pop-server.houston.rr.com  
 Port number 110       �  Secure connection (TLS)     
 Authentication           Plaintext    
 Username <hisname>  
 Password ******  
 
   Incoming SMTP Server  
 Server  smtp-server.rr.com  
 Port number 25       �  Secure connection (TLS)     
 Authentication           None    
 Username <grayed out>  
 Password <grayed out>  

Notes

  1. The server names were supplied by Road Runner, they know enough to get that right. 
  2. The default ports, 110 & 25, work fine. 
  3. Only the POP Authentication had to be changed. 
  4. The Username is self-explatory
  5. Opera always displays Passwords as exactly 6 asterisks (security). 

Comment

I did not talk to directly to Road Runner Tech. Support, but his report of their ignorance of the finer details of mail protocols does not surprise me.  As I expected their web site was equally unhelpful.  Several searches of the support area produced nothing but: 
   "Please refine your search and try again - no matches found."

On the other hand, Opera Support was right on the money; and relatively easy to use. 

Opera On-line Help

Here is the link to the support page at Opera: 
As easy way to find it is to click the "Opera" button on your default Personal toolbar & select "Support".  When you get there, look for: 

Support search

"Support search"
"Search our knowledge base:"
"Keywords:"
(right side of the page, about half way down)
I tried "authentication failure", which didn't work; and then "authentication" which produced:  as the top result. 

FAQ

Another avenue is the FAQ: 
     FAQ

     FAQ -- Frequently
     Asked Questions
(left side of the page, about half way down)

The same article is the 2nd item under the heading: 

Opera Forums (sic)

We didn't need the Fora † this time, but they are searcable & can be very helpful. 
† fora is the correct plural of forum in "proper" English,
because it is a foreign language (Latin),
and we like to show off our knowledge.

HLUG Members

Finally, perhaps the best computing resource in town:  fellow HLUG members, the trick is knowing who knows / uses what. 

Parting Shot / Bon Mot / Snide Remark

If you have a:

-- RickArchibald - 22 Mar 2004

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