Package: base-passwd
A particularly common requirement in email hosting is the use of virtual mailboxes: private mailboxes that are not associated with individual UNIX accounts Typically, all these mailboxes are owned by a single user, often called `vmail' in the examples. This pattern is supported by many mailers and IMAP servers (e.g. postfix, courier, dovecot) Some examples suggest using a high UID/GID, e.g. 5000/5000, and others suggest a system UID/GID (e.g. adduser --system vmail) In some scenarios, the virtual users also have a kind of `home directory' to store mail filter settings or some other settings, although such `home directories' are invisible to most applications that don't explicitly support the virtual user concept (e.g. ssh would never discover .ssh/authorized_keys in such a virtual home directory) I would propose that Debian consider: a) the allocation of a standard user and group name for these purposes, either `vmail', `vuser' or `virt' or similar b) consider making this a standard uid/gid in base-passwd (uid < 100) c) if (b) is not appropriate, maybe propose an alternative standard: maybe a uid > 65000 in the reserved space? The potential benefit of standardising this is that packages could offer automatic support for virtual hosting, without having to know which other packages were installed, they would all just work together http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s9.2.2 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
