saslauthd creates a socket (usually in /var/run/saslauthd) and listens to it.
Here what I see when run saslauthd from the command line: (I use getpwent but pam should be used probably) # saslauthd -a getpwent -d saslauthd[22825] :main : num_procs : 5 saslauthd[22825] :main : mech_option: NULL saslauthd[22825] :main : run_path : /var/state/saslauthd saslauthd[22825] :main : auth_mech : getpwent saslauthd[22825] :ipc_init : using accept lock file: /var/state/saslauthd/mux.accept saslauthd[22825] :ipc_init : listening on socket: /var/run/saslauthd/mux Look here----------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ saslauthd[22825] :detach_tty : master pid is: 0 What do you see when you run it? This is a saslauthd socket on my distro. It should be readable and accessible by postfix. There could be 2 types of problem: * Postfix user may have no access to this file because it doesn't belong to a certain group. Check who has access to this file (with ls -h) and make sure postfix runs under the account who has it. * Postfix may be chrooted. In this case it simply can't access file outside of its chroot. People solve it by symlinking this socket to the postfix chroot: See "ln" command here: https://serverfault.com/questions/319703/postfix-sasl-cannot-connect-to-saslauthd-server-no-such-file-or-directory/530346 and here: http://www.jimmy.co.at/weblog/2005/12/05/postfix-and-sasl-debian/ I believe the latter is your case. saslauthd[22825] :ipc_init : listening on socket: /var/state/saslauthd/mux
