If you're having trouble with 401.3 on an ASP.NET app like MailEnable, then you're in the right place.
I have one confirmed working solution that you should try!
Preface: Installing MailEnable
Parallels Plesk 9.x for Windows comes with MailEnable 1.9 and the super-dupper crappy Horde webmail by default. If you have a dedicated server or VPS, or a really nice shared Windows host, then you can easily upgrade to MailEnable 4.26, which includes the free Standard Edition webmail app.
Download it for free from
http://mailenable.com/downloadprevious.asp
NOTE: Yes, this is a previous version, not the current version 5.x. I've seen a lot of mixed information on how well 5.x will install (lots of failure stories on the MailEnable and Parallels forums), so I'd suggest simply using what's known to work. And honestly, there's not much difference between 4.x and 5.x -- both of them look good, and work well, with all the basic features that make it a very Exchange-like or Outlook-like webmail interface. Anyway...
MailEnable has a very over-simplified KB entry on the upgrade:
http://www.mailenable.com/kb/content...sp?ID=ME020040
They give two screenshots, but it should have been closer to a dozen. You more or less just keep clicking YES and OK, as you want to leave all the defaults as is -- else you may screw up the Plesk integration. The only unique information you'll really need is the nameservers for the machine.
Then you'll go back to Plesk, go to the Server Components menus, and Refresh. Plesk 9.x will automatically see the newly installed MailEnable 4.x, and you can click on Webmail and select your new MailEnable Web Mail 2.0.
Now once this is all done, and you've added your DNS entries to connect webmail.mydomain.com (and it's has time to propagate), it should simply work. In fact, I've installed it twice before today, and it was always perfectly fine!
But not today. Today I get this ugly error when I go to webmail.mydomain.com:
mailenable-4013error.gif
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That, of course, is the error message viewed from the server itself, in Windows via Remote Desktop (RDP). The non-local browser error is a generic error message (either 400, 401 or 500 -- I forgot to note what it was).
Troubleshooting the 401.3 Authentication Error
MailEnable webmail is an Asp.NET application.
When it's combined with Plesk:
- a dummy vhosts folder (webmail\mewebmail) is linked to all webmail.yourdomains.com
- which redirects to the actual .NET app
- which is setup as a site in IIS: webmail(mewebmail)
- which calls up the virtual directoy C:\Parallels\Plesk\Mail Servers\Mail Enable\Bin\NETWebMail
- and whiz bang boom -- you get MailEnable in your browser.
Do you see how we could have problems? That's a pretty big chain.
But here's the strange thing...
I could still access the .NET app, from directly from the actual URL of MailEnable:
I was able to login to webmail and use it without any problems.
Code:
http://webmail.mydomain.com/mewebmail/HooDoo/lang/EN/login.aspx
I only got a 401.3 fail from the
http://webmail.mydomain.com/ URL!
Fixing the 401.3 Authentication Error
Based on some Google searching and reading at a few IIS sites, this situation is somewhat common with Asp.NET applications. Anonymous authentication is not working as it should. I have to be honest -- I don't truly comprehend what's going on here. I can only guess that it has something to do with the referrer and the authentication not passing, as the redirects are going on in the background.
The solution was relatively simple --
change the anonymous access from IUSR to 'Application pool identity' for the webmail(mewebmail) site. This is really quick and easy to do in your VPS or on your dedicated server:
- Go to Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
- Expand your server
- Expand Sites
- Click on webmail(mewebmail)
- Right-click on Anonymous Authentication and Edit
- Change to the second radio button -- Application Pool Identity
- OK
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That's it. Webmail is now working.
And if I'm reading it correctly at microsoft.com and iis.net, this is actually more secure than using the system-wide IUSR accout anyway. So double benefit, I think. Can't beat that.
Parting Thoughts...
While this was was written specifically about the MailEnable webmail software, it's apparently somewhat generic info that may apply in other scenarios -- especially for ASP.NET applications based on forum posts I saw.
This is something I tried based on the generic .NET related posts, and I gambled that it would work on MailEnable. I won this bet.
This issue happened on a Windows 2008 IIS 7 VPS, running Plesk 9.5.4. Previous error-free installs had been on Windows 2008 IIS 7 dedicated servers, running Plesk 9.3. I don't know if that has any relation, one Plesk vs another, or VPS vs dedicated, but figured I'd mention it.
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