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9 <title>Courier Authentication Library</title>
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13 <h1>Courier Authentication Library</h1>
14
15 <p>Download: <a target="_blank" href=
16 "http://www.courier-mta.org/download.html#authlib">http://www.courier-mta.org/download.html#authlib</a></p>
17
18 <h2>Overview</h2>
19
20 <p>The Courier authentication library provides authentication
21 services for other Courier applications. In this context, the
22 term "authentication" refers to the following functions:</p>
23
24 <ol>
25 <li>Take a userid or a loginid, and a password. Determine
26 whether the loginid and the password are valid.</li>
27
28 <li>Given a userid, obtain the following information about the
29 userid:
30
31 <ol type="A">
32 <li>The account's home directory.</li>
33
34 <li>The numeric system userid and groupid that owns all
35 files associated with this account.</li>
36
37 <li>The location of the account's maildir.</li>
38
39 <li>Any maildir quota defined for this account. See the
40 Courier documentation for more information on maildir
41 quotas.</li>
42
43 <li>Other miscellaneous account-specific options.</li>
44 </ol>
45 </li>
46
47 <li>Change the password associated with a loginid.</li>
48
49 <li>Obtain a complete list of all login ids.</li>
50 </ol>
51
52 <p>The Courier authentication library provides alternative
53 implementations of these authentication services:</p>
54
55 <ol>
56 <li>Use the traditional system password files:
57 <code>/etc/passwd</code> and <code>/etc/shadow</code>, possibly
58 in conjunction with the PAM library.</li>
59
60 <li>Maintain all this information in a GDBM or a DB database.
61 The GDBM or the DB database is compiled from plain text files.
62 Perl scripts provide a simple interface for creating and
63 editing the authentication information, then a script compiles
64 the plain text files into a database.</li>
65
66 <li>Use an LDAP server for authentication.</li>
67
68 <li>Use a table in a MySQL database for authentication.</li>
69
70 <li>Use a table in a PostgreSQL database for
71 authentication.</li>
72
73 <li>Use a table in an SQLite file for authentication.</li>
74 </ol>
75
76 <p>All Courier components that use this authentication library,
77 therefore, will be able to authenticate E-mail accounts using any
78 of the above methods.</p>
79
80 <p>Additional information can be found in the <a href=
81 "INSTALL.html">INSTALL</a> file.</p>
82
83 <p>The authentication API is <a href=
84 "authlib.html">documented</a>.</p>
85
86 <h2>Further resources</h2>
87
88 <p>Subscribe to the <i><a target="_blank" href=
89 "http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/courier-users">courier-users</a></i>
90 mailing list. Go to
91 <code>http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/courier-users</code>
92 to subscribe to <i>courier-users</i>, or send a message to
93 <code>&lt;courier-users-request</code><code>@lists.sourceforge.net&gt;</code>
94 and put "subscribe" in the subject line. Search the list archives
95 at <a target="_blank" href=
96 "http://markmail.org/browse/net.sourceforge.lists.courier-users">http://markmail.org/browse/net.sourceforge.lists.courier-users</a>.</p>
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