dovecot - Apr 2004 - username and password not from /etc/passwd

Can dovecot use usernames and passwords not from /etc/passwd and be able to 
read mails of an user whose username and password are in /etc/passwd ?

For example:
- Joe Bloke has a local Unix account joe on Unix server mail.example.com
- Sendmail on mail.example.com accepts mails for joe at example.com and put 
them in /var/mail/joe
- can dovecot use other username/password file or database or directory 
rather than /etc/passwd to authenticate Joe and let him (once logs in 
successfully) reading mails in /var/mail/joe ?
Ideally, the usernames and passwords that dovecot uses are different with
the ones in /etc/passwd. Say, username is joe.bloke at example.com

That way, Joe doesn't need to know the username and password on the Unix
server
at all.

In summary, I want to have IMAP usernames and passwords totally different
from
the local Unix usernames and passwords. And users use only IMAP usernames
and
passwords to read their mails.

I use OpenBSD-3.4, Sendmail 8.12.9, dovecot-0.99.10p0 (pre-compiled packaged
from OpenBSD).

Thanks,
Zoong Pham

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Zoong Pham wrote:
| Can dovecot use usernames and passwords not from /etc/passwd and be
able to
| read mails of an user whose username and password are in /etc/passwd ?
[...]
| I use OpenBSD-3.4, Sendmail 8.12.9, dovecot-0.99.10p0 (pre-compiled
packaged
| from OpenBSD).

On a Debian GNU/Linux machine, I'd configure PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) to use a different authentication scheme than
the default for the imap and pop3 services.

I don't know if that is similar on OpenBSD.


Alternatively (not exactly what you're asking for, but possibly solves
your underlying goal) you can use a fake shell for those users not
allowed shell access.

~ - Jonas

- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

~ - Enden er n?r: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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