From owner-freebsd-isp Tue Sep 1 18:49:19 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA11184 for freebsd-isp-outgoing; Tue, 1 Sep 1998 18:49:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from kapmail.com ([206.31.219.210]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id SAA11171 for ; Tue, 1 Sep 1998 18:49:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from satya@dspsoft.com) Received: (qmail 24929 invoked from network); 2 Sep 1998 01:50:25 -0000 Received: from simba.dspsoft.com (206.31.219.210) by simba.dspsoft.com with SMTP; 2 Sep 1998 01:50:25 -0000 Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 21:50:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Satya Devireddy X-Sender: satya@srv.kapmail.com To: "Jason J. Horton" cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG, isp-tech@isp-tech.com Subject: Re: webbased email/adding new users In-Reply-To: <35EC7715.29886974@intercom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > A client wants to do a Hotmail type service(doesn't > everyone?) and I am wondering how to add new users via > forms, like hotmail does, with the webserver running > as a non-privilidged user and without opening a whole > bunch of security problems for the system. Any ideas? > Please email me or the list I was looking at similar setup for a friend of mine. The setup was going to be a web based email system. No POP3 or any other kind of access. My experiences: 1) Do not create users on the system. Adding users when you above 10K users takes an awful long time (>1 min each). I tried a simple perl script to add 10K users took about a day and half. But deleting them got done overnight. I haven't tried NIS I am running FreeBSD CURRENT-3.0 2) Since I decided to use qmail for the mail server, I am looking at two options: a) use the .qmail-user type mapping for these virtual users or b) hack qmail to lookup a mysql database if the users are not regular users. I tested this hack out and was satisfied. I think by not creating users on the system, I will be reducing a whole lot (if not all) of security holes. Any suggestions/comments welcome... Implemnting the CGI for adding users is as simple as creating a dir and a file (for case a) and inserting a couple of records in the database (for case b). I am still scratching my head of how to implement the mail reading/sending front end (especially MIME stuff)... I could definitely use some help at this mailbox format. Any one has more suggestions please post... ;) -Satya ----------------- Satya Devireddy satya@dspsoft.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message