How to Fix "Sendmail: Temporary Auth Failure"

While configuring my sendmail server I was getting this error. I had to dig up a lot to fix this one. Then I found the solution so I thought I should share this on my blog as well.

Solution:


This happens if you are trying to use PLAIN authentication for sendmail server. So check for this particular package and if it is missing then you might need to install it

cyrus-sasl
cyrus-sasl-plain
sasl

In case you are getting the below error

Oct 06 06:10:11 mail sendmail[8606]: error: safesasl(/usr/lib/sasl/Sendmail.conf) failed: World writable directory
Oct 06 06:10:11  mail sendmail[8606]: error: safesasl(/usr/lib/sasl2  /libanonymous.so.2) failed: World writable directory
Oct 06 06:10:11 mail sendmail[8691]: STARTTLS=server: fileĀ /usr/share/ssl/certs/sendmail.pem unsafe: World writable directory


Solution:

Check permission on /usr/lib as the permissions of all the files and directories should not be more than 755. Change the permission to 755 on the following locations.

# ls -ld /usr /usr/lib   /usr/lib/sasl2   /usr/share   /usr/share/ssl