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10 <h1>Courier Authentication Library
</h1>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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:
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>
45 <li>Change the password associated with a loginid.
</li>
46 <li>Obtain a complete list of all loginids.
</li>
49 <p>The Courier authentication library provides alternative implementations of
50 these authentication services:
</p>
52 <li>Use the traditional system password files:
<code>/etc/passwd
</code> and
53 <code>/etc/shadow
</code>, possibly in conjunction with the PAM
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>
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>
68 <p>Additional information can be found in the
<a
69 href=
"INSTALL.html">INSTALL
</a> file.
</p>
71 <p>The authentication API is
<a href=
"authlib.html">documented
</a>.
</p>
73 <h2>Further resources
</h2>
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>