- Courier Authentication Library
-
- The Courier Authentication Library is a required component that must be
- set up before installing other Courier packages: the Courier Mail Server
- or its components (Courier-IMAP, SqWebMail, or maildrop).
-
- The authentication library used to be included as a part of these
- packages, it is now a standalone library.
-
- Upgrading from older versions of Courier packages that used to include
- this authentication library internally should be as simple as:
-
- ./configure
- make
- make install
- make install-migrate
- make install-configure
-
-Requirements
-
- The Courier authentication library should not have any more requirements
- than the older Courier packages it used to be a part of. There may be an
- exception on some less-common platforms. They may require some additional
- stuff to be loaded before courier-authlib can be installed. This is
- because courier-authlib now uses libtool, which is a new requirement.
- Courier-authlib now uses shared libraries in the place of separate
- authdaemond binaries in the previous versions. Some less-common platforms
- may require additional software to be installed because of that, see
- INSTALL for more information.
-
-The pluses
-
- This new, self-sustaining Courier authentication library offers the
- following benefits:
-
- * Upgrading from Courier-IMAP or SqWebMail to the full Courier package
- does not require authentication re-configuration.
- * Consolidated documentation. Instructions for setting up MySQL,
- PostgreSQL, and the rest, are currently duplicated twice, making it a
- maintenance pain. Now, the documentation will be in one place, and can
- be easily improved, and overhauled. There will be an initial hump to
- ride over, to reconcile the minor differences in the authentication
- documentation in Courier, Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail. Going forward,
- though, everything will be in one place.
- * The authentication API appears to be fairly stable and robust. It will
- not be necessary to update the courier-authlib package with every
- upgrade. Updates to courier-authlib are expected to be very
- infrequent.
- * There is a small minority of established systems that use the
- standalone SqWebMail and Courier-IMAP packages. The consolidated
- courier-authlib library will, as a bonus, provide an official way to
- use only one set of config files, in this configuration.
-
-The minuses
-
- I can only see one possible drawback. Only the daemonized configuration
- will now be possible. This new version of the Courier authentication
- library is, for all intents and purposes, the daemonized configuration of
- the previous authentication library. The non-daemonized version of the
- authentication library is no longer implemented. That code has been
- removed for the simple reason that it can no longer be implemented, as a
- standalone library. It's been clearly shown that the daemonized
- configuration is the more flexible configuration, and is the only way to
- go. The daemonized configuration was the default configuration for several
- years.
-
- I can only see the following minuses from losing the non-daemonized
- configuration. I believe the minuses are greatly outranked by the pluses.
-
- * There are some third party configuration libraries that only work in a
- non-daemonized configuration. I'm aware of one such library, vmailmgr.
- Unless it's been updated to work in daemonized mode, it will no longer
- work.
- * There are also some other third-party hacks that also only work in a
- non-daemonized configuration. There's at least one relay-after-imap or
- relay-after-pop hack for qmail, that only works in a daemonized
- configuration. I believe that relay-after-X hacks have been obsolete
- for several years now. Every mail client worth mentioning these days
- implemented authenticated SMTP, and the relay-after-X hacks need to
- go.
-
- Currently, there are also some borderline configurations possible in a
- non-daemonized configuration, such as using different authentication
- modules completely for imap and pop3, or different authentication modules
- for non-encrypted and encrypted connections. This will no longer be
- possible, but I doubt that there's any valid reason to use such an unusual
- setup.
-
-Testing
-
- The 'make install-migrate' command tries to import the authentication
- configuration from any existing installed Courier package. The
- configuration files for courier-authlib will end up in
- /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/etc/authlib. The existing Courier packages
- don't really know how to use courier-authlib just yet. This will be the
- next step.
-
- However, after installing courier-authlib you should be able to do some
- rudimentary testing by running 'authdaemond start' (where authdaemond is
- what's in the /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/sbin directory). The
- following commands should now work (make sure the authdaemond and authtest
- programs are the ones from /usr/local/lib/courier-authlib/sbin directory,
- and not any existing Courier directory):
-
- authtest userid
- authtest userid password
- authtest userid password newpassword
- authenumerate
-
- The first command displays the account's home directory, userid, groupid,
- and other related data. The second command verifies whether the password
- is valid, or not. The third command changes the password on the account
- (be careful with that).
-
- The goal is that everything should work automatically. In some cases, it
- might be necessary to modify the new authdaemonrc configuration file
- (unlike all othe configuration files, the install-migrate script won't
- copy the existing authdaemonrc, a new one will be installed). Manually
- edit it, and remove all authentication modules that are not needed,
- leaving only the actual ones that are used.
-
-Debugging
-
- To generate additional debugging messages, edit the authdaemond startup
- script (installed in /usr/local/bin by default), and add the following to
- the script:
-
- DEBUG_LOGIN=2
- export DEBUG_LOGIN
-
- Debugging messages from the authentication daemon processes will be sent
- to the syslog facility, and recorded in whatever log file syslog is
- configured to use (usually /var/log/messages or /var/log/maillog).
+ Courier Authentication Library
+
+ A new SQLite authentication module has been added to the Courier
+ Authentication Library. It's considered to be in experimental or testing
+ status.
+
+Debugging
+
+ To generate additional debugging messages, edit the authdaemond startup
+ script (installed in /usr/local/bin by default), and add the following to
+ the script:
+
+ DEBUG_LOGIN=2
+ export DEBUG_LOGIN
+
+ Debugging messages from the authentication daemon processes will be sent
+ to the syslog facility, and recorded in whatever log file syslog is
+ configured to use (usually /var/log/messages or /var/log/maillog).
HCoop / hcoop / debian / courier-authlib.git / blobdiff