NYCPHP Meetup

[Rolan Yang]

csnyder wrote:
> On 7/14/07, Rolan Yang <rolan at omnistep.com> wrote:
>
>> <?php
>> // get $user and $password from $_REQUEST
>> // validate it
>> // check to make sure account doesn't exist
>> `sudo adduser -u $username -p $password -s /sbin/nologin`;
>> // show confirmation message that says your account has been created.
>> ?>
>>
>>
>> This will probably get you a C- grade, but it works :)
>
> Wow, we're giving the webserver sudo permissions now?
>
> You don't need system accounts in order to have mailboxes. Use a mail
> server that allows virtual user lookup in MySQL. This also allows you
> to scale your mail operation across multiple servers.
>
> Dovecot is apparently a good choice, one that I'm considering after
> many years with good ol' uw-imap. You can make up virtual UIDs so that
> the mailboxes are still owned by individual users or all the mail can
> be owned by a single system user. There's a lot of flexibility there,
> and good docs on how to get it all integrated with Postfix.
>
> Not an easy project, Shadab, but one that has the potential to teach
> you a lot about how internet email works at the nuts and bolts level.
>
That was just an example of how to set something up in the 
simplest/quickest way.

I've set up and still maintain a some large custom made clustered mail 
installations using a combination of 
postfix/mysql/courier-imap/squirrelmail blended an arsenal of mail 
blocking/filtering utilities like dspam, spamassassin, and antivirus.  
Some other interesting additions to that were things like a public key 
encryption proxy. Perhaps this would make an interesting talk one day, 
but it's more of a "systems" project than php one.

~Rolan