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10 <h1>Courier Authentication Library</h1>
11
12 <p>This is the Courier authentication library. Copies of this library code
13 used to exist in other tarballs: Courier, Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail.
14 Building and installing any of these packages would've automatically
15 installed this authentication code.</p>
16
17 <p>The authentication library is now a separate, standalone package. This
18 authentication library must now be installed, separately, before upgrading to
19 the following builds (or if installing them for the first time): Courier
20 0.48, Courier-IMAP 4.0, and SqWebMail 5.0. See <a href="NEWS.html">NEWS</a>
21 for more information.</p>
22
23 <p>Download: <a target="_blank"
24 href="http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib">http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib</a></p>
25
26 <h2>Overview</h2>
27
28 <p>The Courier authentication library provides authentication services for
29 other Courier applications. In this context, the term "authentication" refers
30 to the following functions:</p>
31 <ol>
32 <li>Take a userid or a loginid, and a password. Determine whether the
33 loginid and the password are valid.</li>
34 <li>Given a userid, obtain the following information about the userid:
35 <ol type="A">
36 <li>The account's home directory.</li>
37 <li>The numeric system userid and groupid that owns all files
38 associated with this account.</li>
39 <li>The location of the account's maildir.</li>
40 <li>Any maildir quota defined for this account. See the Courier
41 documentation for more information on maildir quotas.</li>
42 <li>Other miscellaneous account-specific options.</li>
43 </ol>
44 </li>
45 <li>Change the password associated with a loginid.</li>
46 <li>Obtain a complete list of all loginids.</li>
47 </ol>
48
49 <p>The Courier authentication library provides alternative implementations of
50 these authentication services:</p>
51 <ol>
52 <li>Use the traditional system password files: <code>/etc/passwd</code> and
53 <code>/etc/shadow</code>, possibly in conjunction with the PAM
54 library.</li>
55 <li>Maintain all this information in a GDBM or a DB database. The GDBM or
56 the DB database is compiled from plain text files. Perl scripts provide a
57 simple interface for creating and editing the authentication information,
58 then a script compiles the plain text files into a database.</li>
59 <li>Use an LDAP server for authentication.</li>
60 <li>Use a table in a MySQL database for authentication.</li>
61 <li>Use a table in a PostgreSQL database for authentication.</li>
62 </ol>
63
64 <p>All Courier components that use this authentication library, therefore,
65 will be able to authenticate E-mail accounts
66 using any of the above methods.</p>
67
68 <p>Additional information can be found in the <a
69 href="INSTALL.html">INSTALL</a> file.</p>
70
71 <p>The authentication API is <a href="authlib.html">documented</a>.</p>
72
73 <h2>Further resources</h2>
74
75 <p>Subscribe to the courier-users mailing list: <a
76 href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users"><code>http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users</code></a>.</p>
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