[pfx] Re: help debugging SASL authentication failure: No worthy mechs found

>>>>> On April 6, 2026 Michael Tokarev <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 06.04.2026 01:50, Greg Klanderman via Postfix-users wrote:
>>>>>>> On April 5, 2026 Michael Tokarev via Postfix-users
>>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Actually, when apt installs something new, it considers
>>> Recommends: for *all* packages it installs.  So if A depends on B,
>>> and B recommends C, and you install A, C will be installed too
>>> (unless you disable installing recommends).  Ditto for the case
>>> when A *recommends* B, etc.
>>
>>> In short, by default apt installs Recommends for everything it
>>> installs.
>> What you've written here does not match the situation I described.
>> What if, before asking to install A, B had already been installed,
>> but without C?

> If you earlier install B without installing its recommendations, -
> sure, apt wont install these recommendations when you later install
> something else which depends on (or recommends) B.

> The whole Recommends thing, and skipping installing recommendations,
> assumes that the user knows what he's doing, and can deal with the
> possible consequences.  In this particular case, just by reading the
> error message, I would immediately see which mechs are available to
> begin with - like, asking google how to list installed sasl auth
> mechanisms.  Or something like this.

Hi Michael,

My point is, that when I just installed trixie/13 a week ago and then
switched the sources to testing/14, the state of the system when I
then ran 'apt install postfix' (A) was that libsasl2-2 (B) had already
been installed, but not libsasl2-modules (C).  So when I installed
postfix, no sasl modules were installed.

I *never* used the option to skip installing recommendations.

This contrasts with the last time I built my mail server, on
buster/10, where the recommended libsasl2-modules did get installed.
Of course that was many years ago and I do not have details of the
state of the system at each step, but my detailed notes show that I did
not have to manually install libsasl2-modules, and this is confirmed
by it still being in the "automatically installed" state.

So, something has changed since buster wrt the initial state of the
distribution, such that libsasl2-2 seems to come installed without its
recommended libsasl2-modules.

Maybe that should be reverted so that libsasl2-modules does get
included in the base system with libsasl2-2?

As an alternate way to restore the previously intended behavior, I had
earlier asked whether postfix should recommend rather than suggest
libsasl2-modules, and you responded:

> It should not.  There are multiple possible sasl implementations (there's
> also dovecot for example), and actually, there are a lot of installs
> where nothing else besides basic mail system is needed - consider a
> case of a server in a server room, which should collect mails from
> cron and send it to a dedicated mailhub: such case is actually very
> common.  So actually we have another problem, where an *extra*,
> unwanted, software is installed by default.

Of course, but the intent seems to be that postfix recommends
libsasl2-modules.  Currently that recommendation is indirect, and is
being thwarted by the initial state of the system.  I don't see how
making the recommendation directly would be a bad thing.

This would have no change other than to install libsasl2-modules in
the case I encountered, where libsasl2-2 had been previously installed
without libsasl2-modules.

Otherwise, it is already installed by default when installing postfix.

> Choosing defaults is not a fun problem, - you cant suit every needs
> out there.  But I really like the way debian does here, allowing to
> install a minimal system with just a bare minimum software for the
> task at hand, instead of always insisting on everything being installed.

The change I asked about would not preclude using
--no-install-recommends to exclude libsasl2-modules, just as would be
needed without that change.

Greg
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