murder and autocreate (I know it is not supported)

[Duncan Gibb]

Andrew Morgan wrote:

GAW> User management tools should NEVER _ever_ have anything to
GAW> do with mailbox _creation_.

AM> NEVER use absolutes!  ;)

Let's talk about "common deployment scenarios", then ;-)

GAW> The (modern) MTA _must_ validate the addresses.

AM> Unix systems don't automatically create accounts when someone
AM> tries to login...

Depends what you mean by "create".  If the Unix box is hooked up to
nss_ldap and pam_ldap, then the login will work as soon as the LDAP
account is active - without anyone or anything touching the Unix box
itself.  Autocreate makes Cyrus equally easy to manage, which is why so
many people would like it or an equivalent bit of functionality in the
main tree.

AM> Nor do they automatically create home directories for an
AM> existing user, or set disk quotas, or populate the home
AM> directory with skeleton shell init scripts.  That is the
AM> job of the user management tool ("useradd" on many systems).

Or if the sysadmin prefers, it's the job of pam_mkhomedir (and pam_quota
if you're using FreeBSD), which may well be in the stack with pam_ldap.


AM> I have no problem if you want to let Cyrus create mailboxes
AM> automatically.  I prefer to have more direct control, but to
AM> each their own.

I don't think anyone wants autocreate to be _compulsory_ - or even
enabled by default - just available without having to maintain a
medium-sized external patch.


Cheers


Duncan

-- 
Duncan Gibb - Technical Director
Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
http://www.siriusit.co.uk/ || t: +44 870 608 0063
Debian Cyrus Team - https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-cyrus-imapd/