Introduction

It is a common problem that web mail does not log your users in. This can be caused by many reasons. We shall try to discuss them here and try to find a solution.

Solution

There is a difference between integrated web mail and non integrated web mail. You should always make sure to have the latest versions of all products.

Non Integrated

No integration with a mail server or Merak is used and web mail simply does not let you in. This means you have an incorrect password or username. You should open the webmail\config\users.dat file and find the user there. The 2 encoded fields are passwords. You can put there a plain password which will be encrypted after the first login again. By this web mail will accept you again.

If you need the admin to access web mail set the 3rd field to "1". That is an admin flag.

Mail Server Integrated

Only the mail server integration is used. Web mail in this case authenticates to the mail server that is given in the Incoming Mail Server option. If it cannot authenticate it will fail. It will fail for all users, including the administrator. The passwords in users.dat are ignored. If you cannot login with the admin account to web mail make sure to check the administrator flag in the users.dat file (3rd field set to "1") and that the admin account exists on the mail server.

Also make sure that the Incoming Mail Server option is specified correctly and that you can connect to it just fine.

Merak Mail Server Integrated

You should consider using Merak Mail Server Power Pack which has the integration properly configured and you do not need to do it manually. However, if you insist.

Web mail is fully and completely integrated with Merak. That means Incoming Mail Server option is not used at all. In this case the Merak Path needs to be set correctly and always you should check the Test Integration button. Once the integration is successful there is nothing more you can do on the web mail side.

Merak integration works this way. Web mail passes the user name, password and IP (of web mail) of the user who connected to web mail to Merak to authenticate the user. If Merak authenticates the user web mail lets you in. This means there might be several problems. Either the Merak Integration Path is set correctly, or you use Domain IP binding and connect to a different IP on web mail than the user is defined on Merak or you have an incorrect user name and password. Make sure to check all of these.

When logging to Web Mail Admin the admin flag is inherited from the Merak user database. If the user does not have the admin flag set (on Merak) it will not be possible for him to login.

Recovering Dead Web Mail

Sometimes although you checked everything you still cannot log in. In such case we recommend doing this. Rename the webmail\config\settings.dat so web mail will not read it. All integrations will be bypassed by this and only users.dat will be used upon login. Now edit users.dat if needed. Either to set the 3rd field to "1" for admin access or set the right password if forgotten (twice plain text in the 2 encoded fields). By this web mail should let you in. This time you should configure the settings carefully so it lets you login for the next time.