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d9898ee8 | 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 | ||
8d138742 CE |
61 | Subscribe to the [5]courier-users mailing list. Go to |
62 | http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/courier-users to subscribe | |
63 | to courier-users, or send a message to | |
64 | <courier-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net> and put "subscribe" in the | |
65 | subject line. Search the list archives at | |
66 | [6]http://markmail.org/browse/net.sourceforge.lists.courier-users. |