Using SYS$ACM with external authentication doesn't work

[Malcolm Dunnett]

I have a VMS 8.3 Alphaserver with Pathworks 7.3B installed on it. I've run the NTA$STARTUP_NT_ACME procedure. $SHOW SERVER ACME show the "MSV1_0" agent is enabled.

I've written a little program to check passwords using the $ACM service. I pass in the principal, password and logon type (NETWORK). If I run this against a "UAF based" user it works fine. If I run it against a user flagged for external authentication and provide the wrong password it tells me the password is wrong ( so I presume it's actually talking to the agent ). If I provide the correct password it fails. The primary and secondary error codes are:

%ACME-E-AUTHFAILURE, authentication has failed
%ACME-E-UNSPECIFIED, general error; see secondary status for details

The ACME_ID and ACME_STATUS fields of the status block both contain zeros.

Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong? Anyone have an example program that works with externally authenticated accounts?