autocreatequota - does it really work?

[Jonathan Marsden]

On 14 Nov 2002, Rob Siemborski writes:

> On 14 Nov 2002, Scott Douglass wrote:
 
>> I've been wondering for a while if the /etc/imapd.conf option:
>> autocreatequota is actually implemented (I'm running 2.1.9 right
>> now).  It isn't working on any of my servers. No quota is set for
>> new user.names.

>> Anyone have any experience with this? It would be handy if it did
>> work.

> autocreatequota only affects users who log in and create their own
> INBOX.  Is this how your mailboxes are being created?

I started using autocreatequota recently.  The 'automatic' mailbox
creation *does* work, just not the way I initially and perhaps naively
expected it to work.  I'm less sure about the automatic setting of a
quota, which I agree would be handy.

The name of the option is potentially confusing, in that the desired
mailbox is not 100% *automatically* created.  Rather, it is only
created when the new user logs in and issues a CREATE INBOX command.
I initially thought the INBOX would be created at login.

I think the man page for imapd.conf changed fairly recently to make
this clearer (thankyou!).  Since some IMAP clients do not seem to
issue that CREATE INBOX command upon disovering the lack of an INBOX,
mailbox creation is not quite as 'automatic' as it sounds for most
users.

What we did here was to make a very small edit to our webmail client
of choice (Squirrelmail) to check for the existence of the INBOX and
issue a CREATE INBOX command at login time if the INBOX does not
already exist.  So the first time a new user uses webmail, their INBOX
is now automatically created for them.

This approach will not directly help users who use a commercial IMAP
client which doesn't send the CREATE INBOX, unless by policy helpdesk
staff use webmail to verify the new account (this check will now have
the side-effect of creating the INBOX).

Below is the diff against Squirrelmail 1.2.8 sources, in case it would
be useful to anyone else.

Like Scott, I do not see a quota being set on the newly (auto-)created
INBOX here, either in 2.1.9 or in 2.2 from CVS a month or so back, but
we have not tracked that down yet -- it might just be some
configuration mistake we have made?  At least we can add a new user to
the LDAP directory, and have them be able to use webmail, with no use
of cyradm required.

Jonathan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- squirrelmail.orig/functions/imap_general.php  Tue Sep 17 08:10:03 2002
+++ squirrelmail/functions/imap_general.php  Tue Oct 22 17:13:05 2002
@@ -231,6 +231,10 @@
             exit;
         }
     }
+    /* Create INBOX if it doesn't exist -- autocreates a new user.  jonathan at grcomputing.net */
+    if (!sqimap_mailbox_exists($imap_stream, 'INBOX')) {
+      sqimap_mailbox_create($imap_stream, 'INBOX', '');
+    }
     return $imap_stream;
 }
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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