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I'm trying to understand the specification of IMAP found at INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION 4rev1 (RFC3501)
Does the greeting from a server always have the following format?

* OK something doesn't matter what

That is, does it start with * OK always and has the * and one whitespace in the beginning?

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Oskar K.
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1 Answers1

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No. It can have at least three variants (see page 14): 

     (1) connection without pre-authentication (OK greeting)
     (2) pre-authenticated connection (PREAUTH greeting)
     (3) rejected connection (BYE greeting)
Sven
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  • is "pre-authentication" different from the main authentication process by login and password? With pre-authentication, are there 2 steps? – Oskar K. May 07 '16 at 13:12
  • Preauth is mainly a debugging tool. http://wiki.dovecot.org/PreAuth – Sven May 07 '16 at 14:07
  • so there the 1st character or word in greeting isn't * ? – Oskar K. May 07 '16 at 14:56
  • so the 1st character or word in greeting isn't * ? – Oskar K. May 11 '16 at 02:49
  • Read chapter 2.2, it makes it clear the server can only respond with `*` on the beginning of the line for the greeting, as it is neither continuing a data stream (`+`) nor responding to a tagged command (where it would respond with the tag send by the client). As far as RFCs go, this section is quite easy to understand ... – Sven May 11 '16 at 16:43
  • then I'll keep asking you because for you it's easy to understand. – Oskar K. May 13 '16 at 14:32