Re: [Exim] Accessing virtual accounts

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Author: Stephen Gran
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Accessing virtual accounts
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 10:03:33PM -0800, Bradford Carpenter said:
> Basically I have no idea how to create a "virtual" user, ie a user with
> no account on the system except for an email account for checking their
> email (at their virtual domain, for example). Came across some
> tutorials on how to do this with qmail (user must enter their email
> address as their username), but doesn't seem applicable to my setup.
>
> I'm running OS X.3.2 (BSD-based), exim 4.30, and qpopper 4.05.
> Everything was compiled with PAM support if this makes a difference.

PAM has a rather large number of plugins that can help in this
situation. It depends on how you want to do it - I use LDAP, some
people use a database backend, some people just use a flat file, if the
number of users is small. There are pam modules for each of these, as I
understand it. pam_unix (the module that authenticates against a unix
account) is only one way of many to authenticate users.

Really without more information on what exactly you're trying to do
(i.e., how many users, how many domains, etc), I'm not sure how to
advise you to proceed. I deal with about twenty-five accounts in 2
domains here, so I use LDAP, since it's a little more scalable than a
flat file. Other places, I have way ridiculous amounts (I think one
site has a couple of hundred thousand users over a couple of thousand
domains), and we use a combination of system accounts, dbm file lookups,
and LDAP there. Many ways to skin a cat, and all that.

Hope that helps some.
--
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|  Stephen Gran                  | The best definition of a gentleman is a |
|  steve@???             | man who can play the accordion -- but   |
|  http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | doesn't.   -- Tom Crichton              |

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