Cyrus IMAP Contributions

Overview

Autocreate INBOX is a patch for Cyrus IMAP server that enables automatic creation of user mailboxes under some certain circumstances. It is intended for large installations where there is a strong possibility that not all users are going to use the mail service. Additionaly this patch will be useful for sites that couldn't afford or wouldn't like to have a per-user mechanism to create INBOXes. In such cases the best solution is to insert a user entry in a user database and let Cyrus create the mailboxes when it is necessary.

Autocreate patch enables the following situations when a user mailbox may be created.

When a user logs in the system (through the IMAP or POP3 protocol) and there is no INBOX.
In this case, the user gets authenticated by Cyrus against a user database (sasldb, shadow, ldap, mysql etc.) After the authentication Cyrus checks if the user INBOX exists and creates it if needed.
When an incoming message arrives (through the LMTP protocol) for a mailbox that does not exist.
In this case, it is the responsibility of the MTA to check against the user database if the recipient exists. On existence of the recipient, the MTA passes the message to the LMTPd. LMTPd tries to deliver the message to the recipient's mailbox. If the mailbox does not exist, lmtpd creates it.

News

Dec, 22 2009: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.16.
Apr, 02 2009: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.14.
Oct, 29 2008: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.13.
Sep, 03 2007: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.9.
Mar, 14 2007: Extra diff to the autocreate patch for building on FreeBSD 6.2 using the ports system. This diff is a diff to the patch and NOT the patch itself. The file to download is named: cyrus-imapd-2.3.8-autocreate-0.10-0-FreeBSD6.2.diff. Patch provided by Laimonas SLepcenka
Mar, 14 2007: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.8.
Apr, 19 2006: Autocreate patch (version 0.9.4) released for cyrus 2.2.13.
Mar, 07 2006: Autocreate patch (version 0.10-0) released for cyrus 2.3.3.
Jan, 20 2006 New release of patch for Cyrus IMAPd 2.3.1 (version 0.10-0). This release is mostly a port to Cyrus IMAPd 2.3.1. Moreover, it contains a new configuration option (autocreate_users) to restrict the users whose mailboxes are automatically created. (For more information on this feature, please check imapd.conf (5) and README.autocreate for Cyrus 2.3.x
Oct, 19 2005 New release of patch for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.12 (version 0.9.4) is out. This patch is a bug fix for a bug in mboxlist:mboxlist_autocreateinbox that causes segmentation fault in ltmpd if rcpt is in the form of & something. This bug was reported by Rob McMahon.
Jul, 16 2005 A bug in lmtpd.c:verify_user(), reported by Aaron Hope, that could potentially lead to a Cyrus segmentation fault has been fixed for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.12. Upgrading the patch to version 0.9.3 for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.12 is strongly recommended.
Feb, 16 2005 New releases of patches for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.18 (version 0.9.3) and Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.12 (version 0.9.2) are out.
Jan, 19 2005: Bugfix release of patch for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.10 is out. Please read the Changelog for more information on the changes.
Jan, 11 2005: New releases of the autocreate inbox patches for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.17 (patch version 0.9.2) and Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.10 (patch version 0.9.0). Both versions contain the autosubscribe_all_sharedofolders new option and the autocreate sieve filter feature. Special thanks go to Simon Matter for his contribution in testing the patches and tracing some serious bugs.
Dec, 24 2004: New release of patch (version 0.9.1) for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.17. It contains an one liner bug fix to the previous release. Oh, I almost forgot it. And merry Christmas to all!
Dec, 21 2004: New release of patch (version 0.9.0) for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.17.
Nov, 24 2004: New release of patch cyrus-imapd-2.2.10-autocreate-0.1.diff for cyrus-imapd-2.2.10. This patch includes a small bugfix
Jul, 31 2004: There will be no release for the patches for cyrus imapd 2.2.8 since they are identical with the patches for cyrus-imapd-2.2.7. Just use those.

Changelog

One may find detailed changelogs for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.x, Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.x and Cyrus IMAPd 2.3.x

Download

Before you download and install the autocreate patch read README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.x, README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.x or README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.3.x.
The patch may be downloaded from email.uoa.gr download site.

Installation instructions

Download the latest autocreate patch for your Cyrus.
Patch cyrus software.
Check the config options of the imapd.conf file in README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.1.x, README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.2.x or README.autocreate for Cyrus IMAPd 2.3.x.

Virtual Domains Support

Virtual domains are supported by all versions of the patch for cyrus-imapd-2.2.1-BETA or later. However, it is not possible to declare different INBOX subfolders to be created or shared folders to be subscribed to for every domain. This is caused due to a limitation of Cyrus to define different per domain configuration files.

Issues to be considered

In order to use the create on post feauture one should be absolutely sure that :
- The MTA checks the validity of the e-mail recipient before sending the e-mail to LMTPd. This is an RFC821 requirement. This usually expands to "the mta should be able to use the account database as user mailbox database".
- Only authorized accounts/services can talk to LMTPd.
Especially in the case of IMAP logins, the current patch implementation checks for the INBOX folder existence upon login, causing an extra mailbox lookup in most of the cases.
A better approach would be to chase the "IMAP_MAILBOX_NONEXISTENT" error code and check if the error is associated with an INBOX folder. However, this would mess up Cyrus code. The way it was implemented may not have been the most performance optimized, but it produces a much cleaner and simple patch.

TODO

Things to be done are :

Support MURDER environments. (Only for 2.3.x versions of Cyrus)

Contact information

For contact information visit the contact page.