[SlugBug] Adding a new mailbox by SSH

[James Wallbank]

Hello Bruno,

Thanks for this advice:

 > This is an older courier setup.  The authdaemon is configured in the
 > authdaemonrc file, the pop3 authentication methods will be configured in
 > the pop3d file: look for 'AUTHMODULELIST' or something like that - The
 > first one in the list that works is the authentication method that is 
used.

A comment in pop3d refers me to the authentication in the authdaemonrc

My heart sank when, in authdaemonrc, I read:

authmodulelist="authcustom authcram authuserdb authldap authpgsql 
authmysql auth pam"

Does that imply a "custom" authentication method? Any thoughts on how to 
track that down?

Meanwhile, you are quite right that this configuration of postfix seems 
to use maildrop - in the file /etc/postfix/transport there's a line for 
each virtual domain, with the word maildrop: specified at the end. eg:

domain,com	maildrop:

I did a bit more poking around, and I'm *sure* that each mail user is 
NOT a real user mapped in /etc/passwd.

Now I think I'm getting somewhere... but it's somewhere bad!

I found the following:

/etc/userdb/

Inside this directory is a plain text file for each virtual domain, with 
pipe-separated fields (one per line for clarity).

user at domain.com uid=<UID of owner of virtual domain>|       \
gid=<GID of owner of virtual domain>|                       \
home=</path/to/vdomainhome/system/virtualusername>|         \
mail=</path/to/vdomainhome/system/virtualusername/Maildir>| \
gecos=<User's Real Name>|                                   \
systempw=<md5hash of virtual user's mail password>

Also the following:

/etc/userdb.dat     <-- GNU dbm 1.x or ndbm database, little endian
/etc/userdb.lock    <-- An empty file
/etc/userdbshadow.dat  <--  GNU dbm 1.x or ndbm database, little endian

Clearly the two data files are cooked from the data inside /etc/userdb - 
with a custom mechanism :-(.

I'm beginning to suspect that the real answer here is starting to be 
"you can't add new mail users without using the control panel" which is 
annoying. What do you think?

Thanks,

James
=====

Bruno Postle wrote:
> On Wed 06-Sep-2006 at 15:38 +0100, James Wallbank wrote:
> 
>>
>> Real mailboxes on the system seem to be listed in the "virtual" file, 
>> set to redirect to themselves... does that make sense? Typical lines 
>> might read:
>>
>> user at domain.com     user at domain.com
>> trash at domain.com    trash at domain.com
>> @domain.com        trash at domain.com
>> elsewhere at domain.com    webmailbox at gmail.com
> 
> 
> These are mapping one (or more) email address to another.  There must be 
> some other configuration that delivers user at domain.com to a mailbox, it 
> could be:
> 
> 'user' is an actual user on the system, their mailbox isn't virtual.
> 
> There is a system alias from 'user' to a real user, look in the 
> 'aliases' file.
> 
> Postfix has a vmailbox configured somewhere for 'user at domain.com'
> 
> Some other tool is used to distribute mail to virtual mailboxes other 
> than the postfix virtual delivery agent.  Something like 'maildrop' 
> would be configured in the main.cf file.
> 
>> The server has no /etc/authlib, but /usr/lib/courier-imap/etc/ looks 
>> promising. Can I find out the authentication method from these contents?
>>
>> authdaemonrc       imapd.dist      pop3d.cnf       quotawarnmsg.example
>> authdaemonrc.dist  imapd-ssl       pop3d.dist      shared
>> imapd              imapd-ssl.dist  pop3d-ssl       shared.tmp
>> imapd.cnf          pop3d           pop3d-ssl.dist
> 
> 
> This is an older courier setup.  The authdaemon is configured in the 
> authdaemonrc file, the pop3 authentication methods will be configured in 
> the pop3d file: look for 'AUTHMODULELIST' or something like that - The 
> first one in the list that works is the authentication method that is used.
> 
> Hope this helps.
>