[Gllug] Exim and virtual domains

[Bruce Richardson]

On 17/05/02, 13:59:59, "Paul Brazier" <pbrazier at cosmos-uk.co.uk> wrote 
regarding RE: [Gllug] Exim and virtual domains:


> The next thing is pop3: the problem being that I need a local user for
> each pop3 account and to distinguish between paul at foo.com and
> paul at bar.com
> Should I be looking at something like Courier or Cyrus here? I'm only
> going to need maybe 10-20 domains so could I handle this with Exim and
> just have local users like user1 at foo.com etc? But then this makes the
> pop3 configuration non-standard for the client who would just want to
> have username="paul", pop3 server="foo.com" rather than remembering
> username="user1 at foo.com", server="foo.com".
> Are the more advanced mail servers designed to get round this problem by
> having a separate authentication mechanism to the standard /etc/passwd
> one and their own "mail spool" system?

Cyrus is designed to be a "black box" mail system, which can be managed 
remotely and doesn't need a local unix account for each mail account 
(unless you specifically choose to authenticate against /etc/passwd).  It 
can use a range of authentication methods (Kerberos, LDAP, anything 
supported by SASL or PAM).  It has its own local delivery binary 
(cyrdeliver) so you would just need to write a Cyrus transport and alter 
your virtual domain director(s) to use it.

Courier can also used in that way: it uses a pluggable module for 
authentication.  I recommend Cyrus. Courier is less complex and also less 
flexible.  Cyrus is just so powerful and featureful, from its flexible 
mailstore through its support for on-server mail-filter rules to its 
wonderfully granular acl system.

But then you're intending this for POP, not IMAP, which makes many of 
those advantages irrelevant.  And setting up delivery for Courier is also 
a bit simpler (maildir is the only bird it recognises).

-- 

Bruce


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