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<h1>Courier Authentication Library</h1>
<p>This is the Courier authentication library. Copies of this
library code used to exist in other tarballs: Courier,
Courier-IMAP, and SqWebMail. Building and installing any of these
packages would've automatically installed this authentication
code.</p>
<p>The authentication library is now a separate, standalone
package. This authentication library must now be installed,
separately, before upgrading to the following builds (or if
installing them for the first time): Courier 0.48, Courier-IMAP
4.0, and SqWebMail 5.0. See <a href="NEWS.html">NEWS</a> for more
information.</p>
<p>Download: <a target="_blank" href=
"http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib">http://www.courier-mta.org/download.php#authlib</a></p>
<h2>Overview</h2>
<p>The Courier authentication library provides authentication
services for other Courier applications. In this context, the
term "authentication" refers to the following functions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Take a userid or a loginid, and a password. Determine
whether the loginid and the password are valid.</li>
<li>Given a userid, obtain the following information about the
userid:
<ol type="A">
<li>The account's home directory.</li>
<li>The numeric system userid and groupid that owns all
files associated with this account.</li>
<li>The location of the account's maildir.</li>
<li>Any maildir quota defined for this account. See the
Courier documentation for more information on maildir
quotas.</li>
<li>Other miscellaneous account-specific options.</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Change the password associated with a loginid.</li>
<li>Obtain a complete list of all loginids.</li>
</ol>
<p>The Courier authentication library provides alternative
implementations of these authentication services:</p>
<ol>
<li>Use the traditional system password files:
<code>/etc/passwd</code> and <code>/etc/shadow</code>, possibly
in conjunction with the PAM library.</li>
<li>Maintain all this information in a GDBM or a DB database.
The GDBM or the DB database is compiled from plain text files.
Perl scripts provide a simple interface for creating and
editing the authentication information, then a script compiles
the plain text files into a database.</li>
<li>Use an LDAP server for authentication.</li>
<li>Use a table in a MySQL database for authentication.</li>
<li>Use a table in a PostgreSQL database for
authentication.</li>
</ol>
<p>All Courier components that use this authentication library,
therefore, will be able to authenticate E-mail accounts using any
of the above methods.</p>
<p>Additional information can be found in the <a href=
"INSTALL.html">INSTALL</a> file.</p>
<p>The authentication API is <a href=
"authlib.html">documented</a>.</p>
<h2>Further resources</h2>
<p>Subscribe to the <i><a target="_blank" href=
"http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/courier-users">courier-users</a></i>
mailing list. Go to
<code>http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/courier-users</code>
to subscribe to <i>courier-users</i>, or send a message to
<code><courier-users-request</code><code>@lists.sourceforge.net></code>
and put "subscribe" in the subject line. Search the list archives
at <a target="_blank" href=
"http://markmail.org/browse/net.sourceforge.lists.courier-users">http://markmail.org/browse/net.sourceforge.lists.courier-users</a>.</p>
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