Re: Sendmail account setup

[sena <sena@decoy.ath.cx>]

I heard that Jay Kelly wrote this on 01/11/00:

> Hello All,
> I have a question on Sendmail. I would like to give out email accounts but
> do not want to give them a debian account. All I want them to have access to
> is email. Can this be done? Now when I add a new email account I have to use
> "adduser" which creates a home directory. What are ISP's using?
> Thanks in advance for your help and time
> 
I've never tried this approach, I just thought of it now...

Instead of using adduser (which I don't use), use useradd (I can give you
more advice on that)...

useradd doesn't create a home directory for the user by default. If your is
configured to do so, you can always use the "-M" flag (don't create a user
home directory).

Another thing: I guess that it would be nice (for ease of administration) to
create a group for mail-only accounts.

The preparation of your system:

	i) Create a mail-only group:
		groupadd -g 200 mailuser

The procedure to create mail-only users would be this one (you can include
it in a shell script):

	i) Create the user:
		useradd -M -g mailuser -s /bin/false <username>
	ii) Enable the account:
		passwd <username>

I don't know if there is any "correct" way to do this, it's just an idea.
You'd have to install a POP3 daemon, so your mail-only users can fetch their
mail.

Regards, sena...

-- 
sena@decoy.ath.cx
http://decoy.ath.cx/~sena/