Failing to authenticate on the frontends

[Michael Loftis]

--On October 4, 2006 10:17:46 AM -0700 Andrew Morgan <morgan at orst.edu> 
wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Michael Loftis wrote:
>
>> --On October 4, 2006 4:18:41 PM +0100 Jesus Roncero
>> <jesus at mxtelecom.com>  wrote:
>>
>> <...>>
>>> So, the question is, isn't the frontend supposed to contact the backend
>>> responsible of that mailbox in order to authenticate the user? or it
>>> needs to have "joe"'s password at the frontend as well?
>>
>> Authentication of the user happens at the frontend.  The frontend then
>> uses  the proxy credentials to authorize as the user on the backend.
>> The backends  don't need a full user database, just the proxy
>> information.
>
> Yes and no.  If an IMAP client support referrals, the frontends will
> return a referral to the appropriate backend.  So, the client may connect
> to the backend as well in some cases.

Oops, I forgot about that detail.  We locally patched referrals out of our 
IMAP proxies.