I use a self-host Spiceworks Helpdesk Server daily to manage all my support tickets. Email plays a big role to automates most of the steps during the process, from automatically generating tickets to sending notifications to support staff, to replying to a ticket with comments and commands that categorize, assign, or close the tickets.
And that’s why it’s a big headache when it stopped working in the middle of the day.
Following the standard drill, I restarted the server, verified and confirmed the credentials, and reentered the same credentials. Nothing works.
SSH into the server, and pulled up the last 50 entries of the mailroom log from the following command.
sudo tail -n 50 /var/log/tron/mail_room/currentAnd here is what I found.
Something is blocking it because it makes no sense why the login failed when the credential is 100% working.
I recall I got a support email from Microsoft 365 not long ago about the basic authentications being disabled to my M365 tenant.
So I head over to my M365 admin portal, opened up the Help sidebar, and fired up this command.
dia: enable basic authentication in exchange onlineThe result? Exchange Online IMAP4 Basi Auth Disabled.
So what now? There is actually a box below the message that allows you to re-enable the service.
One minute after I updated the setting, emails started to follow again in the Spiceworks system. Amazingly effective.
It works for now but what happens when Microsoft permanently disables the Basic Authentication in October?
Stay tuned, I asked the question to the Spiceworks Community, and was told:
We are working on a plan and will keep you posted.
/update on Sept. 28, 2022/
Well, Spiceworks decided to kill the product because of this Basic Authentication being depreciated and suggested anyone who uses Spiceworks Helpdesk Server migrate over to the cloud version instead. I’ve decided to go in another direction, move over to Freshdesk instead.
Thank you for documenting your experience here. I too am dealing with a “dead” local Spiceworks server. I figured it had to be something with MS’s authentication changes and the “abandoned” state of the local server product. Ooof, back to the drawing board for my client.