vmailmgr compatibility?

[Ben Schumacher]

Maybe I'll have to check out the more recent version, but the last time I
checked it didn't do quite what I wanted.  Basically, I'm offering a
solution to customers who do virtual domain hosting for
websites.  Ideally, I want to be able to allow them to have a choice of
either using a shell based MUA or using POP3 for their mail, or a mix of
both.

Here's an example.  Let's say a customer is hosting the domain of
"example.com".  For his email configuration, he needs to have email for
sales at example.com to go to a POP3 box for his sales team, so they can use
a GUI client.  However, anything else @example.com should be delivered to
the shell account example and go to the standard /var/mail
directory.  This is fairly easy to setup without using anything like
vmailmgr.  You can do this simply by setting up an entry in the
virtualdomains file and setting up .qmail aliases in the users directory.

For my setup, I choose to setup an alternate directory to store the mboxes
for POP3 accounts, with a special directory structure.  Basically a users
POP3 box is stored in '/usr/boxes/[username]/[domain]/[address]', which
makes it easier to keep track of who belongs to what belongs to
where.  This allows the system to have a fairly high level of
customizability with respect to the fact that usernames can easily have
multiple domains assigned, etc.

Not the command line variable/environment variable idea was inspired by
how qmail-pop3d works.  IIRC with a qmail-pop3d setup, the checkpassword
program actually does the bulk of the work, since it checks the person's
password, changes to the appropriate directory and setuid's to the
appropriate user.  What I would like (ideally) is a POP3 program that
works with mboxes that could provide similar functionality.  Instead of
changing to directory, however, it could just accept path to mbox from an
environment variable and be setuid'd by an outside program, for example.

I think that pretty much convers what I'm looking for.  I know it sounds
really complicated from the server side, but based on experience with a
similar system, I know that it makes for very easy administration and good
functionality for the customer.

Thanks.

Ben

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Jonathan Walther wrote:

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> 
> Well Ben, if you aren't using vmailmgr, it looks like the latest spop3d
> does what you need; letting you mix maildir and mailbox access, and even handles
> the virtual domain stuff.  One solution I'm considering is to let vmailmgr
> do the DELIVERY to the mailboxes, but ignore its vpasswd utility and just
> use that which comes with spop3d.  Still, it would be nice if the two were
> compatible, or if the authentication mechanism could be abstracted out some
> way similar to how it is with qpop3d;  then for the virtual domains I could
> say "hey, use vcheckpasswd", but for the rest it would use the default,
> perhaps scheckpasswd.  And if it was pluggable modules, anyone could write
> another auth module so you could have almost any scheme.
> 
> Does the author of spop3d subscribe to this list?
> 
> Ben, can you give an example of what you mean by command line or environment
> variable configuration of mbox access?  Whats wrong with using the config
> file?
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Ben Schumacher wrote:
> > Although I don't have the answer to this question, I am looking for it as
> > well.  I am in basically the same situation, which is I want to use qmail
> > with a custom virtual domain setup (not vmailmgr, but something I'm
> > developing on my on) specifically because I want to be able to offer my
> > users the ability to use a shell account and any number of mbox-based
> > MUA's.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, the people on the qmail mailing list aren't all that forth
> > coming with a solution to this problem.  (basically, they feel that
> > anybody would be stupid to want to give their users the ability to use
> > something they are comfortable with, versus using a design philosophy they
> > feel is better.)
> > 
> > I would be very interested in hearing any solution somebody would have for
> > using spop3d with mboxes in directories that can be specified either from
> > the command line or via an environment variable.
> 
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