Re: Courier & vpopmail

[Theodore Knab <tjk@annapolislinux.org>]

Hello,

>My question is: Did anyone install Courier IMAP/POP, Sqwebmail and 
>vpopmail on a Woody box? If yes: Do you use courier-authdaemon and if 
>so, is vpopmail authentification working well? If you do not use 
>courier-authdaemon, how did you get built Courier Debian packages without?

I am using Courier IMAP/POP with the Postfix MTA and Squirrelmail on a
Sarge box, but it started as a Woody Box ;-).

Although all the users are virtual, I do not use vpopmail. But, I use
the courier-authdaemon with courier-ldap.

I get around vpopmail by creating an /etc/passwd entry for
each of the virtual users. The /etc/passwd file is a mirror 
of and external LDAP db. All virtual users are given a /bin/false shell
in my IMAP /etc/passwd. It would be cleaner modify /etc/pam.d/* to use ldap
for auth, but my live system is a work in progress. ;-)

Since each virtual user has a /etc/passwd entry and known
on the local filesytem, I can setup kernel quotas. Although
since IMAP usually moves mail into the trash on delete, this can 
potentially cause more problems than it is worth with virtual users.

Additonally, since I have all users in the /etc/passwd file I use Postfix's local
delivery agent to deliver mail the local /etc/passwd user. This occurs
while Open LDAP holds all the aliases which get mapped to the local
user which is also utilized by Postfix.

Courier uses LDAP to map the path of the users directory and check
passwords.

Although this is a bit of hack and it should look messy, 
the system has been running since June 2002 with only
minor problems and handling over 10 million pieces of mail for 3000 users. 

Of course, it takes many shell scripts to keep everything clean.

I used the following debian packages with postfix on my IMAP server:

ii  courier-authda 0.39.1-1       Courier Mail Server authentication
daemon
ii  courier-base   0.39.1-1       Courier Mail Server Base System
ii  courier-debug  0.39.1-1       Debugging Tools for Courier Mail
Server
ii  courier-doc    0.39.1-1       Documentation for the Courier Mail
Server
ii  courier-imap   1.5.1-1        IMAP daemon with PAM and Maildir
support
ii  courier-ldap   0.39.1-1       LDAP support for Courier Mail Server
ii  courier-maildr 0.39.1-1       Mail delivery agent with filtering
abilities
ii  courier-pop    0.39.1-1       POP3 daemon with PAM and Maildir
support
rc  courier-ssl    0.37.3-3       Courier Mail Server SSL Package