If you have Sendmail SASL set up on Slackware 12 (using the sendmail-slackware-tls-sasl.mc file), but the damned thing just fails to authenticate, and you get errors like:
03135 <<< AUTH CRAM-MD5
03135 >>> 334 <snip>==
03135 <<< <snip>=
03135 >>> 535 5.7.0 authentication failed
03135 <<< AUTH PLAIN <snip>
03135 >>> 535 5.7.0 authentication failed
03135 <<< AUTH LOGIN
03135 >>> 334 <snip>
03135 <<< <snip>=
03135 >>> 334 <snip>
03135 <<< <snip>=
03135 >>> 535 5.7.0 authentication failed
03135 <<< QUIT
03135 >>> 221 2.0.0 myserver.ca closing connection
Or:
Sep 17 06:44:02 myserver sm-mta[3162]: l8HAhvVe003162:
dyn216-8-174-26.ADSL.mnsi.net [216.8.174.26]
did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA
It may be that you forgot an important part of the SASL setup: the /usr/lib/sasl2/Sendmail.conf config file. It's missing on Slackware 12. Create this file and add the following two lines:
pwcheck_method: saslauthd
mech_list: LOGIN PLAIN
That's it. If it doesn't help, then you forgot something else. Go find the Sendmail SMTP AUTH Howto and try to figure out which one of the two dosen things you didn't do.
Hope this helped. You know - setting up Sendmail is a pain for everyone, you're not alone dreaming of a painful death for the people who wrote it.
Cheers