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List:       postfix-users
Subject:    Re: Virtual Mailboxes
From:       Jorey Bump <list () joreybump ! com>
Date:       2008-07-31 14:13:35
Message-ID: 4891C88F.7060608 () joreybump ! com
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Carlos Williams wrote, at 07/31/2008 09:48 AM:
> I was speaking with someone about Postfix and they suggested I use
> "virtual" mailboxes rather than system accounts for mailboxes. They
> indicated there is no point in utilzing UID's for mailusers and system
> accounts simply for Postfix however there appears to be hundreds /
> thousands of available UID / GID in the pool. Do you guys / girls see
> a benefit in this methodology or even understand the theory mentioned?
> I have only 300 users on my server and they all have their own
> /home/user directory w/ Maildir style Inboxes. No since this is the
> only function of this machine (email / Postfix), they never login and
> all are set to /bin/nologin.

I never liked the idea of creating system users just for email, although 
I did it for years. Even with unusable login shells, home directories 
can get pretty untidy and challenging to back up for mail purposes 
(although Maildir does help a bit, here). I wanted to both eliminate 
unnecessary system users and support additional authentication 
mechanisms in a unified way, so I switched to a Postfix/Cyrus IMAPd 
combination, using Cyrus SASL for authentication. It's not as easy as 
'adduser bob', but it compartmentalizes things in a way that fits my 
brain better. I wish I could find something similar for FTP (none of the 
  daemons I like seem to support Cyrus SASL).

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