[tpop3d-discuss] tpop3d, sendmail and owner of mailbox

[Paul Warren]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 09:29:26PM +0100, Zdenek Pizl wrote:
>  Can somebody explain me, how the field unix_user in domain 
> table does work ? I have no idea, why it is there. I'm 
> using sendmail as MTA, and /var/spool/mail as directory 
> with user's mail. 
>  So, there are problems with setting the unix_user field, 
> because any users' mailspool has different owner.

The unix_user is for virtual email setups.  Mail for users on a
virtual domain will get delivered to mail spools owned by that user e.g.

mail for pdw@ex-parrot.com would get delivered to:

	/var/spool/SERVERS/ex-parrot.com/pdw

where as fred@bedrock.com would get delivered to:

	/var/spool/SERVERS/bedrock.com/fred

The files will be owned by the unix_user for the domain in question.
This means that (if your MTA is configured right) deliveries will happen
under this user, and tpop3d will run as that user when reading mail.

This is only really important if you also give domain owners unix
accounts on your machine and you want them to be able to read their own
mail spools.  Also, it gives you a slight security gain in that if were
a security problem with tpop3d then a user would only be able to read
spools within their domain.

Under many setups this is not important, and it is probably easier to
have all virtual mail spools owned by the same user e.g. mail.

Out of interest, why do you use sendmail?

Paul