OT: POP and virtual users

[Ken A]

On 3/30/2010 7:22 AM, Steve Campbell wrote:
> I've got a question about how POP works (if at all) with sendmail
> virtual users.
>
> Here's the situation:
> I've got a user that has an account on one of our hosted domains. That
> user's account is "mail at thedomain.com". For now, it's on another server,
> but I'm getting ready to move it to a more current server. I'll create a
> virtual user in the virtusertable "mail at thedomain.com
> mailxxx at thedomain.com" so as not to interfere with anything related to
> "mail" on the server.

Sendmail virtualuser table maps/resolves addressA at customerdomain.tld to 
addressB at localhost, assuming you are on a mail hub where pop3 lives. 
customerdomain.tld also needs to be in the local-host-names file.

>
> When I set up the account on the user's machine, I'm having problems
> seeing how I should set this up. They only use our server for incoming
> mail, and use another ISP for outgoing. So here's the snag. The account
> will remain mail at thedomain.com. Setting up their SMTP server is not a
> problem as it will stay the same. When I set up the POP server pointing
> to our server, when the MUA requests retrieval of mail, will POP use the
> virtual table entry "mail at thedomain.com" to retrieve mail from the
> mailxxx mailbox? These accounts are UNIX users on the server, BTW.
>

No, the user would be checking the addressB unix account. There are 
other ways to do this, of course, but this is the standard sendmail 
virtual user setup.


> If not, how is the best way to set up all of this? Up until now, I've
> not needed to worry about this problem, and the old server users
> linuxconf (really old, huh?) to handle this. I don't think the user
> really wants to change their email account name, and since they're
> paying for it, I kinda have to oblige.

Users generally just care about their email addresses, but ymmv.
Your pop server may be able to alias things for you too. 
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/VirtualUsers

Ken

>
> Thanks for any enlightenment.
>
> Steve Campbell
>


-- 
Ken Anderson
Pacific Internet - http://www.pacific.net