1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
2 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
4 <html xmlns=
"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
6 <meta http-equiv=
"Content-Type" content=
7 "text/html; charset=utf-8" />
13 <h1>Courier Authentication Library
</h1>
15 <p>This is the Courier authentication library. Copies of this
16 library code used to exist in other tarballs: Courier,
17 Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail. Building and installing any of these
18 packages would've automatically installed this authentication
21 <p>The authentication library is now a separate, standalone
22 package. This authentication library must now be installed,
23 separately, before upgrading to the following builds (or if
24 installing them for the first time): Courier
0.48, Courier-IMAP
25 4.0, and SqWebMail
5.0. See
<a href=
"NEWS.html">NEWS
</a> for more
28 <p>Download:
<a target=
"_blank" href=
29 "http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib">http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib
</a></p>
33 <p>The Courier authentication library provides authentication
34 services for other Courier applications. In this context, the
35 term
"authentication" refers to the following functions:
</p>
38 <li>Take a userid or a loginid, and a password. Determine
39 whether the loginid and the password are valid.
</li>
41 <li>Given a userid, obtain the following information about the
45 <li>The account's home directory.
</li>
47 <li>The numeric system userid and groupid that owns all
48 files associated with this account.
</li>
50 <li>The location of the account's maildir.
</li>
52 <li>Any maildir quota defined for this account. See the
53 Courier documentation for more information on maildir
56 <li>Other miscellaneous account-specific options.
</li>
60 <li>Change the password associated with a loginid.
</li>
62 <li>Obtain a complete list of all loginids.
</li>
65 <p>The Courier authentication library provides alternative
66 implementations of these authentication services:
</p>
69 <li>Use the traditional system password files:
70 <code>/etc/passwd
</code> and
<code>/etc/shadow
</code>, possibly
71 in conjunction with the PAM library.
</li>
73 <li>Maintain all this information in a GDBM or a DB database.
74 The GDBM or the DB database is compiled from plain text files.
75 Perl scripts provide a simple interface for creating and
76 editing the authentication information, then a script compiles
77 the plain text files into a database.
</li>
79 <li>Use an LDAP server for authentication.
</li>
81 <li>Use a table in a MySQL database for authentication.
</li>
83 <li>Use a table in a PostgreSQL database for
87 <p>All Courier components that use this authentication library,
88 therefore, will be able to authenticate E-mail accounts using any
89 of the above methods.
</p>
91 <p>Additional information can be found in the
<a href=
92 "INSTALL.html">INSTALL
</a> file.
</p>
94 <p>The authentication API is
<a href=
95 "authlib.html">documented
</a>.
</p>
97 <h2>Further resources
</h2>
99 <p>Subscribe to the courier-users mailing list:
<a href=
100 "http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users"><code>
101 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users
</code></a>.
</p>