[Vmail-discuss] Webmail for vmail-sql

[Alex Fore]

Thought you all might be interested in what I decided to do.
I decided to keep both our unix poponly users and add virtual
domains email hosting. This way I could start to provide virtual
servicves without having to have anybody change pop3 logins or
passwords. I compiled tpop3d with support for passwd & mysql
logins and I wrote a little filter to seperate & deliver the
mail for localusers@orgininalmailserverdomain.com. Everything
else is handeled by mysql stuff, and therefore I can continue
to use neomail for webmail access. everyone here is more happy
when i maintain the status quo. Thanks for the vmail package
& tpop3d -- I am sure they will be quite usefull.

-Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: vmail-discuss-admin@lists.beasts.org
[mailto:vmail-discuss-admin@lists.beasts.org]On Behalf Of Chris
Lightfoot
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 2:48 PM
To: Alex Fore
Cc: vmail-discuss@lists.beasts.org
Subject: Re: [Vmail-discuss] Webmail for vmail-sql


On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 02:30:52PM -0400, Alex Fore wrote:
> Ok, I just got vmail sql up and running on my test-bed email server here,
> after a few confusions and much learning about exim and mysql of which i
had
> no previous experience. I am setting up vmail-sql for a email server here,
> and we are currently using poponly user accounts + sendmail + cucipop +
> neomail for webmail access. My question is, does anyone know of a gpl
> webmail application that works nice with vmail-sql, and won't force me to
do
> a whole lot of configuration (for each domain -- i am ok with one time
major
> config pain in the ass).

Hmm. This comes up from time to time. Paul (Warren) and I
are working on a webmail system which uses IMAP to access
user mailspools, but it's intended more for users with
unix accounts than for virtual domain users. (Mostly
because there's a tpop3d but no timapd, and nor is there
likely to be in the near future; also, there is the [less
serious] question of how you make virtual domain IMAP
work, given that you then need to have directories in
which users store their folders. It would, of course, be
possible to adapt wu-imapd for this purpose, though the
code is _horrendous_ and I for one would not want to do
it. Also it probably wouldn't be secure. </rant>)

> I am considering openwebmail (which is based on neomail), but I think it
has
> too many features and will just be a pain in my ass (as the server admin)
to
> set up and update whenever we add new domains & users, etc. I like
neomail,
> it rules -- plain, simple & pleasing to look at. But it reads directly
from
> mail spool files and uses unix authentication. I am no programmer, and the
> extent of my programming experience is shell scripts, and some sql
abilites
> (not too good at them yet either).

I had a look at neomail a little while ago, and although
it looks reasonably plausible, the idea of reading direct
from user mailboxes (and its associated security hazards)
left me unimpressed; also, I am a little sceptical of a
program explicitly written as a learning exercise in perl.
OpenWebMail has a POP3 option, but unfortunately POP3
isn't sufficient to build a complete webmail system on.

> I dont think it would be too hard to modify neomail for this task, it has
a
> modularized checklogin script (in perl), and it probly would not be hard
to
> make it set the senders return addy to user@domain from the login
> user%domain. The second of these i could hack out, but the 1st is a little
> above my perl abilites.

Well... obtaining the location of a user's mailspool from
a vmail-sql installation is as easy as doing

    SELECT domain.path, popbox.mbox_name FROM domain, popbox
        WHERE popbox.domain_name = domain.domain_name
          AND popbox.local_part = $local_part
          AND popbox.domain_name = $domain

The authentication step is fairly simple as well; the code
in the vmail-sql scripts to allow a user to change their
POP box password would be a good place to start for the
login stuff.

--
Chris Lightfoot -- www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/
 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often
 a good thing to do -- and always a clever thing to say
 (Will Durant)

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