Email

[ArCh3r]

All,

I have a RedHat9 server and I want to offer freinds/family email on it but I dont necessarily want them to have login accounts, just email. Does not matter, POP or IMAP, and infact I would prefer POP. Does someone know if what I am asking for is possible? Something like accountless email? If yes, what application/utility would I use to accomplish this?

thanks in advance,

chris.

[heartburn]

Chris,

I've never actually tried this, but couldn't you create user accounts for them with the shell set to /sbin/nologin? I guess you could set the home directories to /dev/null too, since they won't be needing them. And as long as they have usernames and passwords, and the mail is in somewhere like /var/spool/mail, I would expect it to work.

- mark

[ArCh3r]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply. I had considered what you suggested, but that seems like a hack way to do it. I just thought that there was a mail package/utility that would mamange email for, lack of a better word, accountlless users.

I remember a buddy of mine had set up email for my gaming clan. There was a web interface to manage the accounts and everything. Now I have no idea what it did in the backend to allow for the emails. Maybe it was doing exactly what you suggested? But I was looking for something like what my friend set up, to create and manage the emails.

Anyone out there know about the mail package I am referring to?

again, thanks in advance,

chris.

[noaxispoint]

He was using a portal like program (such as cPanel, Enism, etc). I would look into these options to do what you want.

[Tino Didriksen]

Once again, there's no need to pay for such functionality. You need:

- http://webmin.com/
- http://usermin.com/
- http://virtualmin.com/

That combo will do what you need, and much more.

[noaxispoint]

I was not aware of that product... I will bookmark that. Thanks!

[heartburn]

edited for speling :)

I use webmin, virtualmin & usermin too. But I don't understand how they would allow people to collect email from popd without having a user account.

- mark

[ArCh3r]

Ok,

So I asked my buddy what he used to set those emails up for me initially and he tersely told me "qmail.", but gave no other info. From what I can determine, qmail is a replacement for sendmail? But I don't see any indication in the docs that it can do what I want, which to repeat the initial question is "How do you make an accountless email"?

I know I can set up virtural/alias emails so that webmaster@, questions@, feedback@, etc all go to the same account. But is there a way to make those emails associated with accounts that don't really have logins on the server besides the email themselves.

Think of features like yahoo and hotmail. I'd assume that they do not have a login-able account for each and every email address? Do they?

Or am I just asking for something that just is not possible?

yet again, thanks in advance for any help ;-)

chris.

[Tino Didriksen]

Originally posted by heartburn
I use webmin, virtualmin & usermin too. But I don't understand how they would allow people to collect email from popd without having a user account. It does create real users (as username.domain), but sets their shell to /dev/null (which denies FTP and SSH access) and creates them with homedir in ~domainowner/homes/username/.

[heartburn]

Chris,

I think Tino's last post answers your question. Creating user accounts with no shell really doesn't seem like a hack to me. It's just a configuration option.

As for Yahoo! & hotmail, I'd be willing to bet that they aren't creating user accounts for mail users. They probably have a custom MTA that stores everything in a big database, but that's just a guess. Something like that is probably more trouble than it's worth for just a handful of accounts.

- mark