Subject: email-only accounts via imap

From: [email-masked] (Jana Dunn)
Date: 4 Nov 1995 21:31:20 GMT

We are in the process of setting up a dedicated host to receive
and spool incoming mail.  The proposed host currently runs
SunOS 4.1.3; we'll be upgrading to Solaris 2.4 in the relatively
near future.  Imapd (from Univ. of of Washington) is installed on
this mailhost system.

Most of our users will log in to a group of UNIX hosts and read
their mail with pine, with their inbox being on the remote mailhost.

Since the users have already logged in and given their passwords once,
we'll like to bypass the imap login/password authentication for these
users.  Users using imap clients from other hosts should still be
subject to the regular authentication process.

The imap documentation says the following:

     If you want to enable the rimap capability, which allows users with a
 suitable client and .rhosts file on the server to access IMAP services
 without transmitting her password in the clear over the network, you need
 to have /etc/rimapd as a link to the real copy of imapd.  Assuming you have
 imapd installed on /usr/local/etc as above:
	% ln -s /usr/local/etc/imapd /etc/rimapd

     Technical note: rimap works by having the client routine tcp_aopen()
 invoke `rsh _host_ exec /etc/rimapd' in an child process, and then
 returning pipes to that process' standard I/O instead of a TCP socket.  You
 can set up `e-mail only accounts' by making the shell be something which
 accepts only that string and not ordinary Unix shell commands.

Perhaps it's trivial, but has someone already concocted a version of the
"something which accepts only that string" so that I don't have to
re-invent the wheel?

I'd also welcome advice from those who have already set up mailhosts
along similar lines.  Have you had problems or discovered difficulties
that I should be aware of?

Thanks.

Jana Dunn
Univ. of Nev.
[email-masked]