Bug#383469: exim4: exim fails to deliver mails to users whose $HOME's it cannot access

[Juha Jäykkä]

> (http://www.exim.org/mail-archives/exim-users/Week-of-Mon-20060814/msg00119.html)

Reading this thread, I think some posters didn't quite get my original
point. Perhaps I didn't explain carefully enough.

The situation, where this whole thing arose was one in which the users'
home directories are on a networked file system, specifically, on
OpenAFS. OpenAFS (like some others, too) does not provide access based
on process (e)uid/(e)gid, but on a valid Kerberos ticket instead. Not
even the root of the mailserver can access the users' home directories
(unless the user is currently logged on and has a valid ticket which the
root steals). Thus it is *not* a question of giving users home
unaccessible home directories.

There are ways of giving the exim a valid AFS token, but typically these
are not recommended (they require storing passwords or
password-equivalent pieces of data on the hard disc) and also makes it
necessary to modify /etc/init.d/exim, which is not very easy to maintain.
It was for these reasons that the users' maildirs were moved from their
homes to /var/mail as the new mailserver was taken to use.

We're perfectly aware that this will break .forward's etc, but there
should be no .forwards on an internal mail server anyway.

-Juha

-- 
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		| Juha Jäykkä, juolja at utu.fi			|
		| home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/		|
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