Getting SMTP-AUTH to work with qmail?

[spindustrious]

Hello,

I finally got qmail working on my Gentoo box, but now I'm having trouble getting SMTP authentication to work.

I have been following the Virtual Mailhosting Guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/virt-mail-howto.xml).

When I send an EHLO request to qmail, it allows me to specify an AUTH type (LOGIN, CRAM-MD5 and PLAIN), requests the login and pass, but then returns "501 malformed auth input (#5.5.4)." I tried testing checkpassword from the command line (echo "username\0password\0`date +%s`\0" | checkpassword date, which according to info on DJB's site should display the date if the input on STDIN is correct). It didn't work.

Since I will be using Cyrus-SASL to authenticate virtual IMAP/POP virtual and system users, I was wondering if it is possible to use it to authenticate for SMTP as well. This would certainly streamline the user administration process, so it's an appealing work-around.

If qmail can't work with Cyus-SASL, is there some authentication scheme that could work with both qmail and Courier-IMAP?

Thanks,

Peter