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1 | Courier Authentication Library |
2 | |
3 | This is the Courier authentication library. Copies of this library code |
4 | used to exist in other tarballs: Courier, Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail. |
5 | Building and installing any of these packages would've automatically |
6 | installed this authentication code. |
7 | |
8 | The authentication library is now a separate, standalone package. This |
9 | authentication library must now be installed, separately, before upgrading |
10 | to the following builds (or if installing them for the first time): |
11 | Courier 0.48, Courier-IMAP 4.0, and SqWebMail 5.0. See [1]NEWS for more |
12 | information. |
13 | |
14 | Download: [2]http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib |
15 | |
16 | Overview |
17 | |
18 | The Courier authentication library provides authentication services for |
19 | other Courier applications. In this context, the term "authentication" |
20 | refers to the following functions: |
21 | |
22 | 1. Take a userid or a loginid, and a password. Determine whether the |
23 | loginid and the password are valid. |
24 | 2. Given a userid, obtain the following information about the userid: |
25 | |
26 | A. The account's home directory. |
27 | B. The numeric system userid and groupid that owns all files |
28 | associated with this account. |
29 | C. The location of the account's maildir. |
30 | D. Any maildir quota defined for this account. See the Courier |
31 | documentation for more information on maildir quotas. |
32 | E. Other miscellaneous account-specific options. |
33 | |
34 | 3. Change the password associated with a loginid. |
35 | 4. Obtain a complete list of all loginids. |
36 | |
37 | The Courier authentication library provides alternative implementations of |
38 | these authentication services: |
39 | |
40 | 1. Use the traditional system password files: /etc/passwd and |
41 | /etc/shadow, possibly in conjunction with the PAM library. |
42 | 2. Maintain all this information in a GDBM or a DB database. The GDBM or |
43 | the DB database is compiled from plain text files. Perl scripts |
44 | provide a simple interface for creating and editing the authentication |
45 | information, then a script compiles the plain text files into a |
46 | database. |
47 | 3. Use an LDAP server for authentication. |
48 | 4. Use a table in a MySQL database for authentication. |
49 | 5. Use a table in a PostgreSQL database for authentication. |
50 | |
51 | All Courier components that use this authentication library, therefore, |
52 | will be able to authenticate E-mail accounts using any of the above |
53 | methods. |
54 | |
55 | Additional information can be found in the [3]INSTALL file. |
56 | |
57 | The authentication API is [4]documented. |
58 | |
59 | Further resources |
60 | |
61 | Subscribe to the courier-users mailing list: |
62 | [5]http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users. |