NEWS

   1                          Courier Authentication Library
   2
   3    This is the initial release of the Courier Authentication Library. See the
   4    README file for background information on courier-authlib.
   5
   6    Upgrading from older versions of Courier packages that used to include
   7    this authentication library as part of the package, instead of standalone,
   8    should be as simple as:
   9
  10  ./configure
  11  make
  12  make install
  13  make install-migrate
  14  make install-configure
  15
  16 Requirements
  17
  18    The Courier authentication library should not have any more requirements
  19    than the older Courier packages it used to be a part of. There may be an
  20    exception on some less-common platforms. They may require some additional
  21    stuff to be loaded before courier-authlib can be installed. This is
  22    because courier-authlib now uses libtool, which is a new requirement.
  23    Courier-authlib now uses shared libraries in the place of separate
  24    authdaemond binaries in the previous versions. Some less-common platforms
  25    may require additional software to be installed because of that, see
  26    INSTALL for more information.
  27
  28 The pluses
  29
  30    This new, self-sustaining Courier authentication library offers the
  31    following benefits:
  32
  33      * Upgrading from Courier-IMAP or SqWebMail to the full Courier package
  34        does not require authentication re-configuration.
  35      * Consolidated documentation. Instructions for setting up MySQL,
  36        PostgreSQL, and the rest, are currently duplicated twice, making it a
  37        maintenance pain. Now, the documentation will be in one place, and can
  38        be easily improved, and overhauled. There will be an initial hump to
  39        ride over, to reconcile the minor differences in the authentication
  40        documentation in Courier, Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail. Going forward,
  41        though, everything will be in one place.
  42      * The authentication API appears to be fairly stable and robust. It will
  43        not be necessary to update the courier-authlib package with every
  44        upgrade. Updates to courier-authlib are expected to be very
  45        infrequent.
  46      * There is a small minority of established systems that use the
  47        standalone SqWebMail and Courier-IMAP packages. The consolidated
  48        courier-authlib library will, as a bonus, provide an official way to
  49        use only one set of config files, in this configuration.
  50
  51 The minuses
  52
  53    I can only see one possible drawback. Only the daemonized configuration
  54    will now be possible. This new version of the Courier authentication
  55    library is, for all intents and purposes, the daemonized configuration of
  56    the previous authentication library. The non-daemonized version of the
  57    authentication library is no longer implemented. That code has been
  58    removed for the simple reason that it can no longer be implemented, as a
  59    standalone library. It's been clearly shown that the daemonized
  60    configuration is the more flexible configuration, and is the only way to
  61    go. The daemonized configuration was the default configuration for several
  62    years.
  63
  64    I can only see the following minuses from losing the non-daemonized
  65    configuration. I believe the minuses are greatly outranked by the pluses.
  66
  67      * There are some third party configuration libraries that only work in a
  68        non-daemonized configuration. I'm aware of one such library, vmailmgr.
  69        Unless it's been updated to work in daemonized mode, it will no longer
  70        work.
  71      * There are also some other third-party hacks that also only work in a
  72        non-daemonized configuration. There's at least one relay-after-imap or
  73        relay-after-pop hack for qmail, that only works in a daemonized
  74        configuration. I believe that relay-after-X hacks have been obsolete
  75        for several years now. Every mail client worth mentioning these days
  76        implemented authenticated SMTP, and the relay-after-X hacks need to
  77        go.
  78
  79    Currently, there are also some borderline configurations possible in a
  80    non-daemonized configuration, such as using different authentication
  81    modules completely for imap and pop3, or different authentication modules
  82    for non-encrypted and encrypted connections. This will no longer be
  83    possible, but I doubt that there's any valid reason to use such a strange
  84    setup.
  85
  86 Testing
  87
  88    The 'make install-migrate' command tries to import the authentication
  89    configuration from any existing installed Courier package. The
  90    configuration files for courier-authlib will end up in
  91    /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/etc/authlib. The existing Courier packages
  92    don't really know how to use courier-authlib just yet. This will be the
  93    next step.
  94
  95    However, after installing courier-authlib you should be able to do some
  96    rudimentary testing by running 'authdaemond start' (where authdaemond is
  97    what's in the /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/sbin directory). The
  98    following commands should now work (make sure the authdaemond and authtest
  99    programs are the ones from /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/sbin directory,
 100    and not any existing Courier directory):
 101
 102  authtest userid
 103  authtest userid password
 104  authtest userid password newpassword
 105  authenumerate
 106
 107    The first command displays the account's home directory, userid, groupid,
 108    and other related data. The second command verifies whether the password
 109    is valid, or not. The third command changes the password on the account
 110    (be careful with that).
 111
 112    The goal is that everything should work automatically. In some cases, it
 113    might be necessary to modify the new authdaemonrc configuration file
 114    (unlike all othe configuration files, the install-migrate script won't
 115    copy the existing authdaemonrc, a new one will be installed). Manually
 116    edit it, and remove all authentication modules that are not needed,
 117    leaving only the actual ones that are used.
 118
 119 Debugging
 120
 121    To generate additional debugging messages, edit the authdaemond startup
 122    script (installed in /usr/local/bin by default), and add the following to
 123    the script:
 124
 125  DEBUG_LOGIN=2
 126  export DEBUG_LOGIN
 127
 128    Debugging messages from the authentication daemon processes will be sent
 129    to the syslog facility, and recorded in whatever log file syslog is
 130    configured to use (usually /var/log/messages or /var/log/maillog).