Linode.com Forum

[dishkuvek]

Is there any implimintation of virtual domain email configuration with postfix that would allow each individual user that owns a particular domain for which they have virtual mail for, to configure the users and mailboxes themselves?

[xiopher]

the easiest way is to add a user then make the user not able to ssh or ftp into the box. This will create the maildir and creditials.

[tronic]

What the original poster is asking for is virtual mailboxes and a back-end for storing user information (other than in /etc/passwd) -- covered at:

http://www.postfix.org/VIRTUAL_README.html#virtual_mailbox

Works great. 8)

I've used that stuff before. Only caveat is that you'd also want to write some kind of front-end to administer the setup including setting up appropriate protections. Especially if you let end users create/edit/delete usernames in your directory or database server setup.

You can use any of the back-ends available for virtual mailbox support -- DBM, MySQL, LDAP, flat files, etc. Pick whichever one you're comfortable with administering.

I would strongly recommend something other than /etc/passwd or flat files. LDAP or MySQL would probably be a better choice since you can enforce more fine-grained permissions for create/edit/delete.

It's better than hacks like filesystem ACLs which would still leave you vulnerable to users touching other domains' users account information.

[asura]

Virtualmin for Webmin works great for this. You can set up or import a virtual domain into Virtualmin, then individual domain owners can add mailboxes (you can control how many are allowed), or more login accounts if you let them.

[dishkuvek]

Thanks everyone. I am thinking about using mysql as a backend. It seems a lot easier to allow users to create all sorts of virtual mailboxes.

I guess I would then create an admin page for each virtual domain account so that the owners of those domains could control their own mailboxes.