On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 08:19:47PM +0100, Michael Ludwig wrote:
> A second reason why I am asking the question totally off-topic here is
> that I believe the vmailmgr list isn't much frequented and I hope
> someone on this list knows something on how to help me. ;-) (the
> courier-imap list isn't very congenial to me as well ;-) )
This is a shame.. fortunately there is another project which I happen to
know of, which should be more accomodating.. :-) (more later in this
mail)
> I have a big understanding problem how I can get the mails to a
> client. Running Courier-IMAP as IMAP and POP3 service, both standard
> and SSL'ed, the courier-daemons are looking (AFAIK) for
> standard-directories such as /home/$system-user/Maildir. But in a
> virtual domain environment it's normal not to have one system-user per
> domain. So how can I achieve this at all? Since three days now I'm
> googl'ing, alltheweb'ing and such stuff, always get the same bad
> results and have absolutely no fortune at all getting this stuff to
> work.
Yes Courier-Imap and others need to be told what the maildir location
is. This can be done in different ways, but usually depends on what
authentication module you're using with imapd.
> I think, as far as I figured out till now, you need something like a
> mapper to map a virtual user db file with username & passwd's &
> mail-directories in it to the courier-daemons. As far as I now know
> there is vmailmgr and vpopmail out there. Are they doing this job??
http://silverwraith.com/vexim/
> I tried to compile vmailmgr because I think I personally like the
> concept of one system-user per domain, as I only have a couple of
> domains so far. But vmailmgr won't compile at all. In no version, not
> as source, not as src-rpm. In the rpm there is no tool like
> authvmailmgr which I think I have to implement in courier-imap. In
> the source I think I saw this module (authvmailmgr) but as the source
> absolutely does not compile on my station (SuSE 9.0 Pro on Pentium I
> 200, 64MB), I think vmailmgr is kicked out right now. :-(
Having used vmailmgr and vpopmail for several years, I can tell you that
they are both lacking in support from developers (in my opinion) and
lacking in configurability.
Take a look at vexim, if you don't mind running a mysql (or other)
database to store this data in.
The people on the mailing list are very helpful too.
> Now I gave vpopmail a closer look and found out, as far as I read and
> could understand, that for virtual user's there must be all data in a
> mysql database which I absolutely don't want to use for approximately
> 5 domains... This would be a little overdrive I think ;-)
I don't know. I use mysql for only 8 domains. It's not so bad, mysql is
very light weight.
Or you have a few other options:
SQLite - doesn't run as a daemon but allows you access to database
files fairly easily
unixODBC - provides an interface to flat-file databases
As of the next release of vexim in about a week (hopefully less), you'll
be able to access any of these databases. If you don't want to run a
full RDBMS like mysql, SQLite might be for you. Read:
http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/
I think you might need to make a tradeoff. Of the few good virtual
domain management systems availible, all make use of some type of
database because it provides a high level of flexibility, and makes
writing the application much easier. As a result you (hopefully) get a
better product.
> So how are you handling this problem?
I wrote my own solution (vexim) :-)
> What did I get wrong at all?
Nothing at all! You're just looking for the solution that is right for
*you*. his might mean that you eventually write your own. This might
happen now, or in a few years. That's up to you.
> What have I got to use to make my wishes work?
Read above ;)
> Thanks so far for reading, in hope that someone can help me out of my
> situation, even if this is OT.
I don't think it's OT. I think virtual domain management is certainly
valid as more admins start to use Exim as the SMTP agent in their
systems.
