diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml index 89875e49f0..fb01ea2f46 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2295 +1,2295 @@ Bill Lloyd Original work by Jim Mock Rewritten by Electronic Mail Synopsis email electronic mail Electronic Mail, better known as email, is one of the most widely used forms of communication today. This chapter provides a basic introduction to running a mail server on &os;, as well as an introduction to sending and receiving email using &os;; however, it is not a complete reference and in fact many important considerations are omitted. For more complete coverage of the subject, the reader is referred to the many excellent books listed in . After reading this chapter, you will know: What software components are involved in sending and receiving electronic mail. Where basic sendmail configuration files are located in FreeBSD. The difference between remote and local mailboxes. How to block spammers from illegally using your mail server as a relay. How to install and configure an alternate Mail Transfer Agent on your system, replacing sendmail. How to troubleshoot common mail server problems. How to use SMTP with UUCP. How to set up the system to send mail only. How to use mail with a dialup connection. How to configure SMTP Authentication for added security. How to install and use a Mail User Agent, such as mutt to send and receive email. How to download your mail from a remote POP or IMAP server. How to automatically apply filters and rules to incoming email. Before reading this chapter, you should: Properly set up your network connection (). Properly set up the DNS information for your mail host - (). + (). Know how to install additional third-party software (). Using Electronic Mail POP IMAP DNS There are five major parts involved in an email exchange. They are: the user program, the server daemon, DNS, a remote or local mailbox, and of course, the mailhost itself. The User Program This includes command line programs such as mutt, pine, elm, and mail, and GUI programs such as balsa, xfmail to name a few, and something more sophisticated like a WWW browser. These programs simply pass off the email transactions to the local mailhost, either by calling one of the server daemons available, or delivering it over TCP. Mailhost Server Daemon mail server daemons sendmail mail server daemons postfix mail server daemons qmail mail server daemons exim &os; ships with sendmail by default, but also support numerous other mail server daemons, just some of which include: exim; postfix; qmail. The server daemon usually has two functions—it is responsible for receiving incoming mail as well as delivering outgoing mail. It is not responsible for the collection of mail using protocols such as POP or IMAP to read your email, nor does it allow connecting to local mbox or Maildir mailboxes. You may require an additional daemon for that. Older versions of sendmail have some serious security issues which may result in an attacker gaining local and/or remote access to your machine. Make sure that you are running a current version to avoid these problems. Optionally, install an alternative MTA from the &os; Ports Collection. Email and DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) and its daemon named play a large role in the delivery of email. In order to deliver mail from your site to another, the server daemon will look up the remote site in the DNS to determine the host that will receive mail for the destination. This process also occurs when mail is sent from a remote host to your mail server. MX record DNS is responsible for mapping hostnames to IP addresses, as well as for storing information specific to mail delivery, known as MX records. The MX (Mail eXchanger) record specifies which host, or hosts, will receive mail for a particular domain. If you do not have an MX record for your hostname or domain, the mail will be delivered directly to your host provided you have an A record pointing your hostname to your IP address. You may view the MX records for any domain by using the &man.host.1; command, as seen in the example below: &prompt.user; host -t mx FreeBSD.org FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by mx1.FreeBSD.org Receiving Mail email receiving Receiving mail for your domain is done by the mail host. It will collect all mail sent to your domain and store it either in mbox (the default method for storing mail) or Maildir format, depending on your configuration. Once mail has been stored, it may either be read locally using applications such as &man.mail.1; or mutt, or remotely accessed and collected using protocols such as POP or IMAP. This means that should you only wish to read mail locally, you are not required to install a POP or IMAP server. Accessing remote mailboxes using <acronym>POP</acronym> and <acronym>IMAP</acronym> POP IMAP In order to access mailboxes remotely, you are required to have access to a POP or IMAP server. These protocols allow users to connect to their mailboxes from remote locations with ease. Though both POP and IMAP allow users to remotely access mailboxes, IMAP offers many advantages, some of which are: IMAP can store messages on a remote server as well as fetch them. IMAP supports concurrent updates. IMAP can be extremely useful over low-speed links as it allows users to fetch the structure of messages without downloading them; it can also perform tasks such as searching on the server in order to minimize data transfer between clients and servers. In order to install a POP or IMAP server, the following steps should be performed: Choose an IMAP or POP server that best suits your needs. The following POP and IMAP servers are well known and serve as some good examples: qpopper; teapop; imap-uw; courier-imap; Install the POP or IMAP daemon of your choosing from the ports collection. Where required, modify /etc/inetd.conf to load the POP or IMAP server. It should be noted that both POP and IMAP transmit information, including username and password credentials in clear-text. This means that if you wish to secure the transmission of information across these protocols, you should consider tunneling sessions over &man.ssh.1;. Tunneling sessions is described in . Accessing local mailboxes Mailboxes may be accessed locally by directly utilizing MUAs on the server on which the mailbox resides. This can be done using applications such as mutt or &man.mail.1;. The Mail Host mail host The mail host is the name given to a server that is responsible for delivering and receiving mail for your host, and possibly your network. Christopher Shumway Contributed by <application>sendmail</application> Configuration sendmail &man.sendmail.8; is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in FreeBSD. sendmail's job is to accept mail from Mail User Agents (MUA) and deliver it to the appropriate mailer as defined by its configuration file. sendmail can also accept network connections and deliver mail to local mailboxes or deliver it to another program. sendmail uses the following configuration files: /etc/mail/access /etc/mail/aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names /etc/mail/mailer.conf /etc/mail/mailertable /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/virtusertable Filename Function /etc/mail/access sendmail access database file /etc/mail/aliases Mailbox aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names Lists of hosts sendmail accepts mail for /etc/mail/mailer.conf Mailer program configuration /etc/mail/mailertable Mailer delivery table /etc/mail/sendmail.cf sendmail master configuration file /etc/mail/virtusertable Virtual users and domain tables <filename>/etc/mail/access</filename> The access database defines what host(s) or IP addresses have access to the local mail server and what kind of access they have. Hosts can be listed as , , or simply passed to sendmail's error handling routine with a given mailer error. Hosts that are listed as , which is the default, are allowed to send mail to this host as long as the mail's final destination is the local machine. Hosts that are listed as are rejected for all mail connections. Hosts that have the option for their hostname are allowed to send mail for any destination through this mail server. Configuring the <application>sendmail</application> Access Database cyberspammer.com 550 We don't accept mail from spammers FREE.STEALTH.MAILER@ 550 We don't accept mail from spammers another.source.of.spam REJECT okay.cyberspammer.com OK 128.32 RELAY In this example we have five entries. Mail senders that match the left hand side of the table are affected by the action on the right side of the table. The first two examples give an error code to sendmail's error handling routine. The message is printed to the remote host when a mail matches the left hand side of the table. The next entry rejects mail from a specific host on the Internet, another.source.of.spam. The next entry accepts mail connections from a host okay.cyberspammer.com, which is more exact than the cyberspammer.com line above. More specific matches override less exact matches. The last entry allows relaying of electronic mail from hosts with an IP address that begins with 128.32. These hosts would be able to send mail through this mail server that are destined for other mail servers. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/aliases</filename> The aliases database contains a list of virtual mailboxes that are expanded to other user(s), files, programs or other aliases. Here are a few examples that can be used in /etc/mail/aliases: Mail Aliases root: localuser ftp-bugs: joe,eric,paul bit.bucket: /dev/null procmail: "|/usr/local/bin/procmail" The file format is simple; the mailbox name on the left side of the colon is expanded to the target(s) on the right. The first example simply expands the mailbox root to the mailbox localuser, which is then looked up again in the aliases database. If no match is found, then the message is delivered to the local user localuser. The next example shows a mail list. Mail to the mailbox ftp-bugs is expanded to the three local mailboxes joe, eric, and paul. Note that a remote mailbox could be specified as user@example.com. The next example shows writing mail to a file, in this case /dev/null. The last example shows sending mail to a program, in this case the mail message is written to the standard input of /usr/local/bin/procmail through a &unix; pipe. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/local-host-names</filename> This is a list of hostnames &man.sendmail.8; is to accept as the local host name. Place any domains or hosts that sendmail is to be receiving mail for. For example, if this mail server was to accept mail for the domain example.com and the host mail.example.com, its local-host-names might look something like this: example.com mail.example.com When this file is updated, &man.sendmail.8; needs to be restarted to read the changes. <filename>/etc/mail/sendmail.cf</filename> sendmail's master configuration file, sendmail.cf controls the overall behavior of sendmail, including everything from rewriting e-mail addresses to printing rejection messages to remote mail servers. Naturally, with such a diverse role, this configuration file is quite complex and its details are a bit out of the scope of this section. Fortunately, this file rarely needs to be changed for standard mail servers. The master sendmail configuration file can be built from &man.m4.1; macros that define the features and behavior of sendmail. Please see /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/cf/README for some of the details. When changes to this file are made, sendmail needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect. <filename>/etc/mail/virtusertable</filename> The virtusertable maps mail addresses for virtual domains and mailboxes to real mailboxes. These mailboxes can be local, remote, aliases defined in /etc/mail/aliases or files. Example Virtual Domain Mail Map root@example.com root postmaster@example.com postmaster@noc.example.net @example.com joe In the above example, we have a mapping for a domain example.com. This file is processed in a first match order down the file. The first item maps root@example.com to the local mailbox root. The next entry maps postmaster@example.com to the mailbox postmaster on the host noc.example.net. Finally, if nothing from example.com has matched so far, it will match the last mapping, which matches every other mail message addressed to someone at example.com. This will be mapped to the local mailbox joe. Andrew Boothman Written by Gregory Neil Shapiro Information taken from e-mails written by Changing Your Mail Transfer Agent email change mta As already mentioned, FreeBSD comes with sendmail already installed as your MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). Therefore by default it is in charge of your outgoing and incoming mail. However, for a variety of reasons, some system administrators want to change their system's MTA. These reasons range from simply wanting to try out another MTA to needing a specific feature or package which relies on another mailer. Fortunately, whatever the reason, FreeBSD makes it easy to make the change. Install a New MTA You have a wide choice of MTAs available. A good starting point is the FreeBSD Ports Collection where you will be able to find many. Of course you are free to use any MTA you want from any location, as long as you can make it run under FreeBSD. Start by installing your new MTA. Once it is installed it gives you a chance to decide if it really fulfills your needs, and also gives you the opportunity to configure your new software before getting it to take over from sendmail. When doing this, you should be sure that installing the new software will not attempt to overwrite system binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail. Otherwise, your new mail software has essentially been put into service before you have configured it. Please refer to your chosen MTA's documentation for information on how to configure the software you have chosen. Disable <application>sendmail</application> The procedure used to start sendmail changed significantly between 4.5-RELEASE and 4.6-RELEASE. Therefore, the procedure used to disable it is subtly different. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/4 and Earlier (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Enter: sendmail_enable="NO" into /etc/rc.conf. This will disable sendmail's incoming mail service, but if /etc/mail/mailer.conf (see below) is not changed, sendmail will still be used to send e-mail. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/4 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) In order to completely disable sendmail you must use sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. If you disable sendmail's outgoing mail service in this way, it is important that you replace it with a fully working alternative mail delivery system. If you choose not to, system functions such as &man.periodic.8; will be unable to deliver their results by e-mail as they would normally expect to. Many parts of your system may expect to have a functional sendmail-compatible system. If applications continue to use sendmail's binaries to try to send e-mail after you have disabled them, mail could go into an inactive sendmail queue, and never be delivered. If you only want to disable sendmail's incoming mail service, you should set sendmail_enable="NO" in /etc/rc.conf. More information on sendmail's startup options is available from the &man.rc.sendmail.8; manual page. Running Your New MTA on Boot You may have a choice of two methods for running your new MTA on boot, again depending on what version of FreeBSD you are running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/11 (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Add a script to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ that ends in .sh and is executable by root. The script should accept start and stop parameters. At startup time the system scripts will execute the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh start which you can also use to manually start the server. At shutdown time, the system scripts will use the stop option, running the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh stop which you can also use to manually stop the server while the system is running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/11 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) With later versions of FreeBSD, you can use the above method or you can set mta_start_script="filename" in /etc/rc.conf, where filename is the name of some script that you want executed at boot to start your MTA. Replacing <application>sendmail</application> as the System's Default Mailer The program sendmail is so ubiquitous as standard software on &unix; systems that some software just assumes it is already installed and configured. For this reason, many alternative MTA's provide their own compatible implementations of the sendmail command-line interface; this facilitates using them as drop-in replacements for sendmail. Therefore, if you are using an alternative mailer, you will need to make sure that software trying to execute standard sendmail binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail actually executes your chosen mailer instead. Fortunately, FreeBSD provides a system called &man.mailwrapper.8; that does this job for you. When sendmail is operating as installed, you will find something like the following in /etc/mail/mailer.conf: sendmail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail send-mail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail mailq /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail newaliases /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail hoststat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail purgestat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail This means that when any of these common commands (such as sendmail itself) are run, the system actually invokes a copy of mailwrapper named sendmail, which checks mailer.conf and executes /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail instead. This system makes it easy to change what binaries are actually executed when these default sendmail functions are invoked. Therefore if you wanted /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat to be run instead of sendmail, you could change /etc/mail/mailer.conf to read: sendmail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat send-mail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat mailq /usr/local/supermailer/bin/mailq-compat newaliases /usr/local/supermailer/bin/newaliases-compat hoststat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/hoststat-compat purgestat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/purgestat-compat Finishing Once you have everything configured the way you want it, you should either kill the sendmail processes that you no longer need and start the processes belonging to your new software, or simply reboot. Rebooting will also give you the opportunity to ensure that you have correctly configured your system to start your new MTA automatically on boot. Troubleshooting email troubleshooting Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.bar.edu, instead of just mumble. BIND Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of BIND that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line: search foo.bar.edu bar.edu instead of the previous: domain foo.bar.edu into your /etc/resolv.conf. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. MX record sendmail says mail loops back to myself This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows: I'm getting these error messages: 553 MX list for domain.net points back to relay.domain.net 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine does not recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/mail/local-host-names [known as /etc/sendmail.cw prior to version 8.10] (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add Cw domain.net to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. The sendmail FAQ can be found at and is recommended reading if you want to do any tweaking of your mail setup. PPP How can I run a mail server on a dial-up PPP host? You want to connect a FreeBSD box on a LAN to the Internet. The FreeBSD box will be a mail gateway for the LAN. The PPP connection is non-dedicated. UUCP MX record There are at least two ways to do this. One way is to use UUCP. Another way is to get a full-time Internet server to provide secondary MX services for your domain. For example, if your company's domain is example.com and your Internet service provider has set example.net up to provide secondary MX services to your domain: example.com. MX 10 example.com. MX 20 example.net. Only one host should be specified as the final recipient (add Cw example.com in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf on example.com). When the sending sendmail is trying to deliver the mail it will try to connect to you (example.com) over the modem link. It will most likely time out because you are not online. The program sendmail will automatically deliver it to the secondary MX site, i.e. your Internet provider (example.net). The secondary MX site will then periodically try to connect to your host and deliver the mail to the primary MX host (example.com). You might want to use something like this as a login script: #!/bin/sh # Put me in /usr/local/bin/pppmyisp ( sleep 60 ; /usr/sbin/sendmail -q ) & /usr/sbin/ppp -direct pppmyisp If you are going to create a separate login script for a user you could use sendmail -qRexample.com instead in the script above. This will force all mail in your queue for example.com to be processed immediately. A further refinement of the situation is as follows: Message stolen from the &a.isp;. > we provide the secondary MX for a customer. The customer connects to > our services several times a day automatically to get the mails to > his primary MX (We do not call his site when a mail for his domains > arrived). Our sendmail sends the mailqueue every 30 minutes. At the > moment he has to stay 30 minutes online to be sure that all mail is > gone to the primary MX. > > Is there a command that would initiate sendmail to send all the mails > now? The user has not root-privileges on our machine of course. In the privacy flags section of sendmail.cf, there is a definition Opgoaway,restrictqrun Remove restrictqrun to allow non-root users to start the queue processing. You might also like to rearrange the MXs. We are the 1st MX for our customers like this, and we have defined: # If we are the best MX for a host, try directly instead of generating # local config error. OwTrue That way a remote site will deliver straight to you, without trying the customer connection. You then send to your customer. Only works for hosts, so you need to get your customer to name their mail machine customer.com as well as hostname.customer.com in the DNS. Just put an A record in the DNS for customer.com. Why do I keep getting Relaying Denied errors when sending mail from other hosts? In default FreeBSD installations, sendmail is configured to only send mail from the host it is running on. For example, if a POP server is available, then users will be able to check mail from school, work, or other remote locations but they still will not be able to send outgoing emails from outside locations. Typically, a few moments after the attempt, an email will be sent from MAILER-DAEMON with a 5.7 Relaying Denied error message. There are several ways to get around this. The most straightforward solution is to put your ISP's address in a relay-domains file at /etc/mail/relay-domains. A quick way to do this would be: &prompt.root; echo "your.isp.example.com" > /etc/mail/relay-domains After creating or editing this file you must restart sendmail. This works great if you are a server administrator and do not wish to send mail locally, or would like to use a point and click client/system on another machine or even another ISP. It is also very useful if you only have one or two email accounts set up. If there is a large number of addresses to add, you can simply open this file in your favorite text editor and then add the domains, one per line: your.isp.example.com other.isp.example.net users-isp.example.org www.example.org Now any mail sent through your system, by any host in this list (provided the user has an account on your system), will succeed. This is a very nice way to allow users to send mail from your system remotely without allowing people to send SPAM through your system. Advanced Topics The following section covers more involved topics such as mail configuration and setting up mail for your entire domain. Basic Configuration email configuration Out of the box, you should be able to send email to external hosts as long as you have set up /etc/resolv.conf or are running your own name server. If you would like to have mail for your host delivered to the MTA (e.g., sendmail) on your own FreeBSD host, there are two methods: Run your own name server and have your own domain. For example, FreeBSD.org Get mail delivered directly to your host. This is done by delivering mail directly to the current DNS name for your machine. For example, example.FreeBSD.org. SMTP Regardless of which of the above you choose, in order to have mail delivered directly to your host, it must have a permanent static IP address (not a dynamic address, as with most PPP dial-up configurations). If you are behind a firewall, it must pass SMTP traffic on to you. If you want to receive mail directly at your host, you need to be sure of either of two things: MX record Make sure that the (lowest-numbered) MX record in your DNS points to your host's IP address. Make sure there is no MX entry in your DNS for your host. Either of the above will allow you to receive mail directly at your host. Try this: &prompt.root; hostname example.FreeBSD.org &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX If that is what you see, mail directly to yourlogin@example.FreeBSD.org should work without problems (assuming sendmail is running correctly on example.FreeBSD.org). If instead you see something like this: &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX example.FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by hub.FreeBSD.org All mail sent to your host (example.FreeBSD.org) will end up being collected on hub under the same username instead of being sent directly to your host. The above information is handled by your DNS server. The DNS record that carries mail routing information is the Mail eXchange entry. If no MX record exists, mail will be delivered directly to the host by way of its IP address. The MX entry for freefall.FreeBSD.org at one time looked like this: freefall MX 30 mail.crl.net freefall MX 40 agora.rdrop.com freefall MX 10 freefall.FreeBSD.org freefall MX 20 who.cdrom.com As you can see, freefall had many MX entries. The lowest MX number is the host that receives mail directly if available; if it is not accessible for some reason, the others (sometimes called backup MXes) accept messages temporarily, and pass it along when a lower-numbered host becomes available, eventually to the lowest-numbered host. Alternate MX sites should have separate Internet connections from your own in order to be most useful. Your ISP or another friendly site should have no problem providing this service for you. Mail for Your Domain In order to set up a mailhost (a.k.a. mail server) you need to have any mail sent to various workstations directed to it. Basically, you want to claim any mail for any hostname in your domain (in this case *.FreeBSD.org) and divert it to your mail server so your users can receive their mail on the master mail server. DNS To make life easiest, a user account with the same username should exist on both machines. Use &man.adduser.8; to do this. The mailhost you will be using must be the designated mail exchanger for each workstation on the network. This is done in your DNS configuration like so: example.FreeBSD.org A 204.216.27.XX ; Workstation MX 10 hub.FreeBSD.org ; Mailhost This will redirect mail for the workstation to the mailhost no matter where the A record points. The mail is sent to the MX host. You cannot do this yourself unless you are running a DNS server. If you are not, or cannot run your own DNS server, talk to your ISP or whoever provides your DNS. If you are doing virtual email hosting, the following information will come in handy. For this example, we will assume you have a customer with his own domain, in this case customer1.org, and you want all the mail for customer1.org sent to your mailhost, mail.myhost.com. The entry in your DNS should look like this: customer1.org MX 10 mail.myhost.com You do not need an A record for customer1.org if you only want to handle email for that domain. Be aware that pinging customer1.org will not work unless an A record exists for it. The last thing that you must do is tell sendmail on your mailhost what domains and/or hostnames it should be accepting mail for. There are a few different ways this can be done. Either of the following will work: Add the hosts to your /etc/mail/local-host-names file if you are using the FEATURE(use_cw_file). If you are using a version of sendmail earlier than 8.10, the file is /etc/sendmail.cw. Add a Cwyour.host.com line to your /etc/sendmail.cf or /etc/mail/sendmail.cf if you are using sendmail 8.10 or higher. SMTP with UUCP The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is designed for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file. Tweaking /etc/mail/sendmail.cf manually is an advanced topic. sendmail version 8 generates config files via &man.m4.1; preprocessing, where the actual configuration occurs on a higher abstraction level. The &man.m4.1; configuration files can be found under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf. If you did not install your system with full sources, the sendmail configuration set has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball. Assuming you have your FreeBSD source code CDROM mounted, do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/src &prompt.root; cat scontrib.?? | tar xzf - -C /usr/src/contrib/sendmail This extracts to only a few hundred kilobytes. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to &man.m4.1; configuration. The best way to support UUCP delivery is to use the mailertable feature. This creates a database that sendmail can use to make routing decisions. First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf contains a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf &prompt.root; make foo.cf &prompt.root; cp foo.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf A typical .mc file might look like: VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable, `hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable') define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) define(`confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES') MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP The lines containing accept_unresolvable_domains, nocanonify, and confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed to support UUCP delivery. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there. Once you have this, you need an /etc/mail/mailertable file. If you have only one link to the outside that is used for all your mails, the following file will suffice: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable . uucp-dom:your.uucp.relay A more complex example might look like this: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom: The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to shortcut the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a uucp-neighbor !recipient override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname. As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before use. The command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable file. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable file. Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter 3,0, followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing CtrlD. &prompt.user; sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> > 3,0 foo@example.com canonify input: foo @ example . com ... parse returns: $# uucp-dom $@ your.uucp.relay $: foo < @ example . com . > > ^D Bill Moran Contributed by Setting Up to Send Only There are many instances where you may only want to send mail through a relay. Some examples are: Your computer is a desktop machine, but you want to use programs such as &man.send-pr.1;. To do so, you should use your ISP's mail relay. The computer is a server that does not handle mail locally, but needs to pass off all mail to a relay for processing. Just about any MTA is capable of filling this particular niche. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to properly configure a full-featured MTA just to handle offloading mail. Programs such as sendmail and postfix are largely overkill for this use. Additionally, if you are using a typical Internet access service, your agreement may forbid you from running a mail server. The easiest way to fulfill those needs is to install the mail/ssmtp port. Execute the following commands as root: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp &prompt.root; make install replace clean Once installed, mail/ssmtp can be configured with a four-line file located at /usr/local/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf: root=yourrealemail@example.com mailhub=mail.example.com rewriteDomain=example.com hostname=_HOSTNAME_ Make sure you use your real email address for root. Enter your ISP's outgoing mail relay in place of mail.example.com (some ISPs call this the outgoing mail server or SMTP server). Make sure you disable sendmail by setting sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. mail/ssmtp has some other options available. See the example configuration file in /usr/local/etc/ssmtp or the manual page of ssmtp for some examples and more information. Setting up ssmtp in this manner will allow any software on your computer that needs to send mail to function properly, while not violating your ISP's usage policy or allowing your computer to be hijacked for spamming. Using Mail with a Dialup Connection If you have a static IP address, you should not need to adjust anything from the defaults. Set your host name to your assigned Internet name and sendmail will do the rest. If you have a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup PPP connection to the Internet, you will probably have a mailbox on your ISPs mail server. Let's assume your ISP's domain is example.net, and that your user name is user, you have called your machine bsd.home, and your ISP has told you that you may use relay.example.net as a mail relay. In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you must install a retrieval agent. The fetchmail utility is a good choice as it supports many different protocols. This program is available as a package or from the ports collection (mail/fetchmail). Usually, your ISP will provide POP. If you are using user PPP, you can automatically fetch your mail when an Internet connection is established with the following entry in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail If you are using sendmail (as shown below) to deliver mail to non-local accounts, you probably want to have sendmail process your mailqueue as soon as your Internet connection is established. To do this, put this command after the fetchmail command in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: !bg su user -c "sendmail -q" Assume that you have an account for user on bsd.home. In the home directory of user on bsd.home, create a .fetchmailrc file: poll example.net protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret This file should not be readable by anyone except user as it contains the password MySecret. In order to send mail with the correct from: header, you must tell sendmail to use user@example.net rather than user@bsd.home. You may also wish to tell sendmail to send all mail via relay.example.net, allowing quicker mail transmission. The following .mc file should suffice: VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`example.net')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `relay.example.net') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this .mc file into a sendmail.cf file. Also, do not forget to restart sendmail after updating sendmail.cf. James Gorham Written by SMTP Authentication Having SMTP Authentication in place on your mail server has a number of benefits. SMTP Authentication can add another layer of security to sendmail, and has the benefit of giving mobile users who switch hosts the ability to use the same mail server without the need to reconfigure their mail client settings each time. Install security/cyrus-sasl from the ports. You can find this port in security/cyrus-sasl. security/cyrus-sasl has a number of compile time options to choose from and, for the method we will be using here, make sure to select the option. After installing security/cyrus-sasl, edit /usr/local/lib/sasl/Sendmail.conf (or create it if it does not exist) and add the following line: pwcheck_method: passwd This method will enable sendmail to authenticate against your FreeBSD passwd database. This saves the trouble of creating a new set of usernames and passwords for each user that needs to use SMTP authentication, and keeps the login and mail password the same. Now edit /etc/make.conf and add the following lines: SENDMAIL_CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/sasl1 -DSASL SENDMAIL_LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib SENDMAIL_LDADD=-lsasl These lines will give sendmail the proper configuration options for linking to cyrus-sasl at compile time. Make sure that cyrus-sasl has been installed before recompiling sendmail. Recompile sendmail by executing the following commands: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail &prompt.root; make cleandir &prompt.root; make obj &prompt.root; make &prompt.root; make install The compile of sendmail should not have any problems if /usr/src has not been changed extensively and the shared libraries it needs are available. After sendmail has been compiled and reinstalled, edit your /etc/mail/freebsd.mc file (or whichever file you use as your .mc file. Many administrators choose to use the output from &man.hostname.1; as the .mc file for uniqueness). Add these lines to it: dnl set SASL options TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confDEF_AUTH_INFO', `/etc/mail/auth-info')dnl These options configure the different methods available to sendmail for authenticating users. If you would like to use a method other than pwcheck, please see the included documentation. Finally, run &man.make.1; while in /etc/mail. That will run your new .mc file and create a .cf file named freebsd.cf (or whatever name you have used for your .mc file). Then use the command make install restart, which will copy the file to sendmail.cf, and will properly restart sendmail. For more information about this process, you should refer to /etc/mail/Makefile. If all has gone correctly, you should be able to enter your login information into the mail client and send a test message. For further investigation, set the of sendmail to 13 and watch /var/log/maillog for any errors. You may wish to add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf so this service will be available after every system boot: sasl_pwcheck_enable="YES" sasl_pwcheck_program="/usr/local/sbin/pwcheck" This will ensure the initialization of SMTP_AUTH upon system boot. For more information, please see the sendmail page regarding SMTP authentication. Marc Silver Contributed by Mail User Agents Mail User Agents A Mail User Agent (MUA) is an application that is used to send and receive email. Furthermore, as email evolves and becomes more complex, MUA's are becoming increasingly powerful in the way they interact with email; this gives users increased functionality and flexibility. &os; contains support for numerous mail user agents, all of which can be easily installed using the FreeBSD Ports Collection. Users may choose between graphical email clients such as evolution or balsa, console based clients such as mutt, pine or mail, or the web interfaces used by some large organizations. mail &man.mail.1; is the default Mail User Agent (MUA) in &os;. It is a console based MUA that offers all the basic functionality required to send and receive text-based email, though it is limited in interaction abilities with attachments and can only support local mailboxes. Although mail does not natively support interaction with POP or IMAP servers, these mailboxes may be downloaded to a local mbox file using an application such as fetchmail, which will be discussed later in this chapter (). In order to send and receive email, simply invoke the mail command as per the following example: &prompt.user; mail The contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail are automatically read by the mail utility. Should the mailbox be empty, the utility exits with a message indicating that no mails could be found. Once the mailbox has been read, the application interface is started, and a list of messages will be displayed. Messages are automatically numbered, as can be seen in the following example: Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help. "/var/mail/marcs": 3 messages 3 new >N 1 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/510 "test" N 2 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "user account" N 3 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "sample" Messages can now be read by using the t mail command, suffixed by the message number that should be displayed. In this example, we will read the first email: & t 1 Message 1: From root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05:52 2004 X-Original-To: marcs@localhost Delivered-To: marcs@localhost To: marcs@localhost Subject: test Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 14:05:52 +0200 (SAST) From: root@localhost (Charlie Root) This is a test message, please reply if you receive it. As can be seen in the example above, the t key will cause the message to be displayed with full headers. To display the list of messages again, the h key should be used. If the email requires a response, you may use mail to reply, by using either the R or r mail keys. The R key instructs mail to reply only to the sender of the email, while r replies not only to the sender, but also to other recipients of the message. You may also suffix these commands with the mail number which you would like make a reply to. Once this has been done, the response should be entered, and the end of the message should be marked by a single . on a new line. An example can be seen below: & R 1 To: root@localhost Subject: Re: test Thank you, I did get your email. . EOT In order to send new email, the m key should be used, followed by the recipient email address. Multiple recipients may also be specified by separating each address with the , delimiter. The subject of the message may then be entered, followed by the message contents. The end of the message should be specified by putting a single . on a new line. & mail root@localhost Subject: I mastered mail Now I can send and receive email using mail ... :) . EOT While inside the mail utility, the ? command may be used to display help at any time, the &man.mail.1; manual page should also be consulted for more help with mail. As previously mentioned, the &man.mail.1; command was not originally designed to handle attachments, and thus deals with them very poorly. Newer MUAs such as mutt handle attachments in a much more intelligent way. But should you still wish to use the mail command, the converters/mpack port may be of considerable use. mutt mutt is a small yet very powerful Mail User Agent, with excellent features, just some of which include: The ability to thread messages; PGP support for digital signing and encryption of email; MIME Support; Maildir Support; Highly customizable. All of these features help to make mutt one of the most advanced mail user agents available. See for more information on mutt. The stable version of mutt may be installed using the mail/mutt port, while the current development version may be installed via the mail/mutt-devel port. After the port has been installed, mutt can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; mutt mutt will automatically read the contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail and display the contents if applicable. If no mails are found in the user mailbox, then mutt will wait for commands from the user. The example below shows mutt displaying a list of messages: In order to read an email, simply select it using the cursor keys, and press the Enter key. An example of mutt displaying email can be seen below: As with the &man.mail.1; command, mutt allows users to reply only to the sender of the message as well as to all recipients. To reply only to the sender of the email, use the r keyboard shortcut. To send a group reply, which will be sent to the original sender as well as all the message recipients, use the g shortcut. mutt makes use of the &man.vi.1; command as an editor for creating and replying to emails. This may be customized by the user by creating or editing their own .muttrc file in their home directory and setting the editor variable. In order to compose a new mail message, press m. After a valid subject has been given, mutt will start &man.vi.1; and the mail can be written. Once the contents of the mail are complete, save and quit from vi and mutt will resume, displaying a summary screen of the mail that is to be delivered. In order to send the mail, press y. An example of the summary screen can be seen below: mutt also contains extensive help, which can be accessed from most of the menus by pressing the ? key. The top line also displays the keyboard shortcuts where appropriate. pine pine is aimed at a beginner user, but also includes some advanced features. The pine software has had several remote vulnerabilities discovered in the past, which allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as users on the local system, by the action of sending a specially-prepared email. All such known problems have been fixed, but the pine code is written in a very insecure style and the &os; Security Officer believes there are likely to be other undiscovered vulnerabilities. You install pine at your own risk. The current version of pine may be installed using the mail/pine4 port. Once the port has installed, pine can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; pine The first time that pine is run it displays a greeting page with a brief introduction, as well as a request from the pine development team to send an anonymous email message allowing them to judge how many users are using their client. To send this anonymous message, press Enter, or alternatively press E to exit the greeting without sending an anonymous message. An example of the greeting page can be seen below: Users are then presented with the main menu, which can be easily navigated using the cursor keys. This main menu provides shortcuts for the composing new mails, browsing of mail directories, and even the administration of address book entries. Below the main menu, relevant keyboard shortcuts to perform functions specific to the task at hand are shown. The default directory opened by pine is the inbox. To view the message index, press I, or select the MESSAGE INDEX option as seen below: The message index shows messages in the current directory, and can be navigated by using the cursor keys. Highlighted messages can be read by pressing the Enter key. In the screenshot below, a sample message is displayed by pine. Keyboard shortcuts are displayed as a reference at the bottom of the screen. An example of one of these shortcuts is the r key, which tells the MUA to reply to the current message being displayed. Replying to an email in pine is done using the pico editor, which is installed by default with pine. The pico utility makes it easy to navigate around the message and is slightly more forgiving on novice users than &man.vi.1; or &man.mail.1;. Once the reply is complete, the message can be sent by pressing CtrlX . The pine application will ask for confirmation. The pine application can be customized using the SETUP option from the main menu. Consult for more information. Marc Silver Contributed by Using fetchmail Using fetchmail fetchmail is a full-featured IMAP and POP client which allows users to automatically download mail from remote IMAP and POP servers and save it into local mailboxes; there it can be accessed more easily. fetchmail can be installed using the mail/fetchmail port, and offers various features, some of which include: Support of POP3, APOP, KPOP, IMAP, ETRN and ODMR protocols. Ability to forward mail using SMTP, which allows filtering, forwarding, and aliasing to function normally. May be run in daemon mode to check periodically for new messages. Can retrieve multiple mailboxes and forward them based on configuration, to different local users. While it is outside the scope of this document to explain all of fetchmail's features, some basic features will be explained. The fetchmail utility requires a configuration file known as .fetchmailrc, in order to run correctly. This file includes server information as well as login credentials. Due to the sensitive nature of the contents of this file, it is advisable to make it readable only by the owner, with the following command: &prompt.user; chmod 600 .fetchmailrc The following .fetchmailrc serves as an example for downloading a single user mailbox using POP. It tells fetchmail to connect to example.com using a username of joesoap and a password of XXX. This example assumes that the user joesoap is also a user on the local system. poll example.com protocol pop3 username "joesoap" password "XXX" The next example connects to multiple POP and IMAP servers and redirects to different local usernames where applicable: poll example.com proto pop3: user "joesoap", with password "XXX", is "jsoap" here; user "andrea", with password "XXXX"; poll example2.net proto imap: user "john", with password "XXXXX", is "myth" here; The fetchmail utility can be run in daemon mode by running it with the flag, followed by the interval (in seconds) that fetchmail should poll servers listed in the .fetchmailrc file. The following example would cause fetchmail to poll every 60 seconds: &prompt.user; fetchmail -d 60 More information on fetchmail can be found at . Marc Silver Contributed by Using procmail Using procmail The procmail utility is an incredibly powerful application used to filter incoming mail. It allows users to define rules which can be matched to incoming mails to perform specific functions or to reroute mail to alternative mailboxes and/or email addresses. procmail can be installed using the mail/procmail port. Once installed, it can be directly integrated into most MTAs; consult your MTA documentation for more information. Alternatively, procmail can be integrated by adding the following line to a .forward in the home directory of the user utilizing procmail features: "|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail || exit 75" The following section will display some basic procmail rules, as well as brief descriptions on what they do. These rules, and others must be inserted into a .procmailrc file, which must reside in the user's home directory. The majority of these rules can also be found in the &man.procmailex.5; manual page. Forward all mail from user@example.com to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * ^From.*user@example.com ! goodmail@example2.com Forward all mails shorter than 1000 bytes to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * < 1000 ! goodmail@example2.com Send all mail sent to alternate@example.com into a mailbox called alternate: :0 * ^TOalternate@example.com alternate Send all mail with a subject of Spam to /dev/null: :0 ^Subject:.*Spam /dev/null A useful recipe that parses incoming &os;.org mailing lists and places each list in its own mailbox: :0 * ^Sender:.owner-freebsd-\/[^@]+@FreeBSD.ORG { LISTNAME=${MATCH} :0 * LISTNAME??^\/[^@]+ FreeBSD-${MATCH} } diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users/chapter.sgml index 0c441b5fe1..89546e44c8 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1129 +1,1129 @@ Neil Blakey-Milner Contributed by Users and Basic Account Management Synopsis FreeBSD allows multiple users to use the computer at the same time. Obviously, only one of those users can be sitting in front of the screen and keyboard at any one time Well, unless you hook up multiple terminals, but we will save that for . , but any number of users can log in through the network to get their work done. To use the system every user must have an account. After reading this chapter, you will know: The differences between the various user accounts on a FreeBSD system. How to add user accounts. How to remove user accounts. How to change account details, such as the user's full name, or preferred shell. How to set limits on a per-account basis, to control the resources such as memory and CPU time that accounts and groups of accounts are allowed to access. How to use groups to make account management easier. Before reading this chapter, you should: Understand the basics of &unix; and FreeBSD (). Introduction All access to the system is achieved via accounts, and all processes are run by users, so user and account management are of integral importance on FreeBSD systems. Every account on a FreeBSD system has certain information associated with it to identify the account. User name The user name as it would be typed at the login: prompt. User names must be unique across the computer; you may not have two users with the same user name. There are a number of rules for creating valid user names, documented in &man.passwd.5;; you would typically use user names that consist of eight or fewer all lower case characters. Password Each account has a password associated with it. The password may be blank, in which case no password will be required to access the system. This is normally a very bad idea; every account should have a password. User ID (UID) The UID is a number, traditionally from 0 to 65535 It is possible to use UID/GIDs as large as 4294967295, but such IDs can cause serious problems with software that makes assumptions about the values of IDs. , used to uniquely identify the user to the system. Internally, FreeBSD uses the UID to identify users—any FreeBSD commands that allow you to specify a user name will convert it to the UID before working with it. This means that you can have several accounts with different user names but the same UID. As far as FreeBSD is concerned these accounts are one user. It is unlikely you will ever need to do this. Group ID (GID) The GID is a number, traditionally from 0 to 65535, used to uniquely identify the primary group that the user belongs to. Groups are a mechanism for controlling access to resources based on a user's GID rather than their UID. This can significantly reduce the size of some configuration files. A user may also be in more than one group. Login class Login classes are an extension to the group mechanism that provide additional flexibility when tailoring the system to different users. Password change time By default FreeBSD does not force users to change their passwords periodically. You can enforce this on a per-user basis, forcing some or all of your users to change their passwords after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Account expiry time By default FreeBSD does not expire accounts. If you are creating accounts that you know have a limited lifespan, for example, in a school where you have accounts for the students, then you can specify when the account expires. After the expiry time has elapsed the account cannot be used to log in to the system, although the account's directories and files will remain. User's full name The user name uniquely identifies the account to FreeBSD, but does not necessarily reflect the user's real name. This information can be associated with the account. Home directory The home directory is the full path to a directory on the system in which the user will start when logging on to the system. A common convention is to put all user home directories under /home/username or /usr/home/username. The user would store their personal files in their home directory, and any directories they may create in there. User shell The shell provides the default environment users use to interact with the system. There are many different kinds of shells, and experienced users will have their own preferences, which can be reflected in their account settings. There are three main types of accounts: the Superuser, system users, and user accounts. The Superuser account, usually called root, is used to manage the system with no limitations on privileges. System users run services. Finally, user accounts are used by real people, who log on, read mail, and so forth. The Superuser Account accounts superuser (root) The superuser account, usually called root, comes preconfigured to facilitate system administration, and should not be used for day-to-day tasks like sending and receiving mail, general exploration of the system, or programming. This is because the superuser, unlike normal user accounts, can operate without limits, and misuse of the superuser account may result in spectacular disasters. User accounts are unable to destroy the system by mistake, so it is generally best to use normal user accounts whenever possible, unless you especially need the extra privilege. You should always double and triple-check commands you issue as the superuser, since an extra space or missing character can mean irreparable data loss. So, the first thing you should do after reading this chapter is to create an unprivileged user account for yourself for general usage if you have not already. This applies equally whether you are running a multi-user or single-user machine. Later in this chapter, we discuss how to create additional accounts, and how to change between the normal user and superuser. System Accounts accounts system System users are those used to run services such as DNS, mail, web servers, and so forth. The reason for this is security; if all services ran as the superuser, they could act without restriction. accounts daemon accounts operator Examples of system users are daemon, operator, bind (for the Domain Name Service), and news. Often sysadmins create httpd to run web servers they install. accounts nobody nobody is the generic unprivileged system user. However, it is important to keep in mind that the more services that use nobody, the more files and processes that user will become associated with, and hence the more privileged that user becomes. User Accounts accounts user User accounts are the primary means of access for real people to the system, and these accounts insulate the user and the environment, preventing the users from damaging the system or other users, and allowing users to customize their environment without affecting others. Every person accessing your system should have a unique user account. This allows you to find out who is doing what, prevent people from clobbering each others' settings or reading each others' mail, and so forth. Each user can set up their own environment to accommodate their use of the system, by using alternate shells, editors, key bindings, and language. Modifying Accounts accounts modifying There are a variety of different commands available in the &unix; environment to manipulate user accounts. The most common commands are summarized below, followed by more detailed examples of their usage. Command Summary &man.adduser.8; The recommended command-line application for adding new users. &man.rmuser.8; The recommended command-line application for removing users. &man.chpass.1; A flexible tool to change user database information. &man.passwd.1; The simple command-line tool to change user passwords. &man.pw.8; A powerful and flexible tool to modify all aspects of user accounts. <command>adduser</command> accounts adding adduser /usr/share/skel skeleton directory &man.adduser.8; is a simple program for adding new users. It creates entries in the system passwd and group files. It will also create a home directory for the new user, copy in the default configuration files (dotfiles) from /usr/share/skel, and can optionally mail the new user a welcome message. In &os; 5.0, &man.adduser.8; was rewritten from a Perl script to a shell script that acts as wrapper around &man.pw.8;, so its usage is slightly different on &os; 4.X and &os; 5.X. To create the initial configuration file, use adduser -s -config_create. The makes &man.adduser.8; default to quiet. We use later when we want to change defaults. Next, we configure &man.adduser.8; defaults, and create our first user account, since using root for normal usage is evil and nasty. Configuring <command>adduser</command> and adding a user on &os; 4.X &prompt.root; adduser -v Use option ``-silent'' if you don't want to see all warnings and questions. Check /etc/shells Check /etc/master.passwd Check /etc/group Enter your default shell: csh date no sh tcsh zsh [sh]: zsh Your default shell is: zsh -> /usr/local/bin/zsh Enter your default HOME partition: [/home]: Copy dotfiles from: /usr/share/skel no [/usr/share/skel]: Send message from file: /etc/adduser.message no [/etc/adduser.message]: no Do not send message Use passwords (y/n) [y]: y Write your changes to /etc/adduser.conf? (y/n) [n]: y Ok, let's go. Don't worry about mistakes. I will give you the chance later to correct any input. Enter username [a-z0-9_-]: jru Enter full name []: J. Random User Enter shell csh date no sh tcsh zsh [zsh]: Enter home directory (full path) [/home/jru]: Uid [1001]: Enter login class: default []: Login group jru [jru]: Login group is ``jru''. Invite jru into other groups: guest no [no]: wheel Enter password []: Enter password again []: Name: jru Password: **** Fullname: J. Random User Uid: 1001 Gid: 1001 (jru) Class: Groups: jru wheel HOME: /home/jru Shell: /usr/local/bin/zsh OK? (y/n) [y]: y Added user ``jru'' Copy files from /usr/share/skel to /home/jru Add another user? (y/n) [y]: n Goodbye! &prompt.root; In summary, we changed the default shell to zsh (an additional shell found in the Ports Collection), and turned off the sending of a welcome mail to added users. We then saved the configuration, created an account for jru, and made sure jru is in wheel group (so that she may assume the role of root with the &man.su.1; command.) The password you type in is not echoed, nor are asterisks displayed. Make sure you do not mistype the password twice. Just use &man.adduser.8; without arguments from now on, and you will not have to go through changing the defaults. If the program asks you to change the defaults, exit the program, and try the option. Adding a user on &os; 5.X &prompt.root; adduser Username: jru Full name: J. Random User Uid (Leave empty for default): Login group [jru]: Login group is jru. Invite jru into other groups? []: wheel Login class [default]: Shell (sh csh tcsh zsh nologin) [sh]: zsh Home directory [/home/jru]: Use password-based authentication? [yes]: Use an empty password? (yes/no) [no]: Use a random password? (yes/no) [no]: Enter password: Enter password again: Lock out the account after creation? [no]: Username : jru Password : **** Full Name : J. Random User Uid : 1001 Class : Groups : jru wheel Home : /home/jru Shell : /usr/local/bin/zsh Locked : no OK? (yes/no): yes adduser: INFO: Successfully added (jru) to the user database. Add another user? (yes/no): no Goodbye! &prompt.root; <command>rmuser</command> rmuser accounts removing You can use &man.rmuser.8; to completely remove a user from the system. &man.rmuser.8; performs the following steps: Removes the user's &man.crontab.1; entry (if any). Removes any &man.at.1; jobs belonging to the user. Kills all processes owned by the user. Removes the user from the system's local password file. Removes the user's home directory (if it is owned by the user). Removes the incoming mail files belonging to the user from /var/mail. Removes all files owned by the user from temporary file storage areas such as /tmp. Finally, removes the username from all groups to which it belongs in /etc/group. If a group becomes empty and the group name is the same as the username, the group is removed; this complements the per-user unique groups created by &man.adduser.8;. &man.rmuser.8; cannot be used to remove superuser accounts, since that is almost always an indication of massive destruction. By default, an interactive mode is used, which attempts to make sure you know what you are doing. <command>rmuser</command> Interactive Account Removal &prompt.root; rmuser jru Matching password entry: jru:*:1001:1001::0:0:J. Random User:/home/jru:/usr/local/bin/zsh Is this the entry you wish to remove? y Remove user's home directory (/home/jru)? y Updating password file, updating databases, done. Updating group file: trusted (removing group jru -- personal group is empty) done. Removing user's incoming mail file /var/mail/jru: done. Removing files belonging to jru from /tmp: done. Removing files belonging to jru from /var/tmp: done. Removing files belonging to jru from /var/tmp/vi.recover: done. &prompt.root; <command>chpass</command> chpass &man.chpass.1; changes user database information such as passwords, shells, and personal information. Only system administrators, as the superuser, may change other users' information and passwords with &man.chpass.1;. When passed no options, aside from an optional username, &man.chpass.1; displays an editor containing user information. When the user exists from the editor, the user database is updated with the new information. In &os; 5.X, you will be asked for your password after exiting the editor if you are not the superuser. Interactive <command>chpass</command> by Superuser #Changing user database information for jru. Login: jru Password: * Uid [#]: 1001 Gid [# or name]: 1001 Change [month day year]: Expire [month day year]: Class: Home directory: /home/jru Shell: /usr/local/bin/zsh Full Name: J. Random User Office Location: Office Phone: Home Phone: Other information: The normal user can change only a small subset of this information, and only for themselves. Interactive <command>chpass</command> by Normal User #Changing user database information for jru. Shell: /usr/local/bin/zsh Full Name: J. Random User Office Location: Office Phone: Home Phone: Other information: &man.chfn.1; and &man.chsh.1; are just links to &man.chpass.1;, as are &man.ypchpass.1;, &man.ypchfn.1;, and &man.ypchsh.1;. NIS support is automatic, so specifying the yp before the command is not necessary. If this is confusing to you, do not worry, NIS will - be covered in . + be covered in . <command>passwd</command> passwd accounts changing password &man.passwd.1; is the usual way to change your own password as a user, or another user's password as the superuser. To prevent accidental or unauthorized changes, the original password must be entered before a new password can be set. Changing Your Password &prompt.user; passwd Changing local password for jru. Old password: New password: Retype new password: passwd: updating the database... passwd: done Changing Another User's Password as the Superuser &prompt.root; passwd jru Changing local password for jru. New password: Retype new password: passwd: updating the database... passwd: done As with &man.chpass.1;, &man.yppasswd.1; is just a link to &man.passwd.1;, so NIS works with either command. <command>pw</command> pw &man.pw.8; is a command line utility to create, remove, modify, and display users and groups. It functions as a front end to the system user and group files. &man.pw.8; has a very powerful set of command line options that make it suitable for use in shell scripts, but new users may find it more complicated than the other commands presented here. Limiting Users limiting users accounts limiting If you have users, the ability to limit their system use may have come to mind. FreeBSD provides several ways an administrator can limit the amount of system resources an individual may use. These limits are divided into two sections: disk quotas, and other resource limits. quotas limiting users quotas disk quotas Disk quotas limit disk usage to users, and they provide a way to quickly check that usage without calculating it every time. Quotas are discussed in . The other resource limits include ways to limit the amount of CPU, memory, and other resources a user may consume. These are defined using login classes and are discussed here. /etc/login.conf Login classes are defined in /etc/login.conf. The precise semantics are beyond the scope of this section, but are described in detail in the &man.login.conf.5; manual page. It is sufficient to say that each user is assigned to a login class (default by default), and that each login class has a set of login capabilities associated with it. A login capability is a name=value pair, where name is a well-known identifier and value is an arbitrary string processed accordingly depending on the name. Setting up login classes and capabilities is rather straight-forward and is also described in &man.login.conf.5;. The system does not read the configuration in /etc/login.conf directly, but reads the database file /etc/login.conf.db. To generate /etc/login.conf.db from /etc/login.conf, execute the following command: &prompt.root; cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf Resource limits are different from plain vanilla login capabilities in two ways. First, for every limit, there is a soft (current) and hard limit. A soft limit may be adjusted by the user or application, but may be no higher than the hard limit. The latter may be lowered by the user, but never raised. Second, most resource limits apply per process to a specific user, not the user as a whole. Note, however, that these differences are mandated by the specific handling of the limits, not by the implementation of the login capability framework (i.e., they are not really a special case of login capabilities). And so, without further ado, below are the most commonly used resource limits (the rest, along with all the other login capabilities, may be found in &man.login.conf.5;). coredumpsize coredumpsize limiting users coredumpsize The limit on the size of a core file generated by a program is, for obvious reasons, subordinate to other limits on disk usage (e.g., filesize, or disk quotas). Nevertheless, it is often used as a less-severe method of controlling disk space consumption: since users do not generate core files themselves, and often do not delete them, setting this may save them from running out of disk space should a large program (e.g., emacs) crash. cputime cputime limiting users cputime This is the maximum amount of CPU time a user's process may consume. Offending processes will be killed by the kernel. This is a limit on CPU time consumed, not percentage of the CPU as displayed in some fields by &man.top.1; and &man.ps.1;. A limit on the latter is, at the time of this writing, not possible, and would be rather useless: a compiler—probably a legitimate task—can easily use almost 100% of a CPU for some time. filesize filesize limiting users filesize This is the maximum size of a file the user may possess. Unlike disk quotas, this limit is enforced on individual files, not the set of all files a user owns. maxproc maxproc limiting users maxproc This is the maximum number of processes a user may be running. This includes foreground and background processes alike. For obvious reasons, this may not be larger than the system limit specified by the kern.maxproc &man.sysctl.8;. Also note that setting this too small may hinder a user's productivity: it is often useful to be logged in multiple times or execute pipelines. Some tasks, such as compiling a large program, also spawn multiple processes (e.g., &man.make.1;, &man.cc.1;, and other intermediate preprocessors). memorylocked memorylocked limiting users memorylocked This is the maximum amount a memory a process may have requested to be locked into main memory (e.g., see &man.mlock.2;). Some system-critical programs, such as &man.amd.8;, lock into main memory such that in the event of being swapped out, they do not contribute to a system's trashing in time of trouble. memoryuse memoryuse limiting users memoryuse This is the maximum amount of memory a process may consume at any given time. It includes both core memory and swap usage. This is not a catch-all limit for restricting memory consumption, but it is a good start. openfiles openfiles limiting users openfiles This is the maximum amount of files a process may have open. In FreeBSD, files are also used to represent sockets and IPC channels; thus, be careful not to set this too low. The system-wide limit for this is defined by the kern.maxfiles &man.sysctl.8;. sbsize sbsize limiting users sbsize This is the limit on the amount of network memory, and thus mbufs, a user may consume. This originated as a response to an old DoS attack by creating a lot of sockets, but can be generally used to limit network communications. stacksize stacksize limiting users stacksize This is the maximum size a process' stack may grow to. This alone is not sufficient to limit the amount of memory a program may use; consequently, it should be used in conjunction with other limits. There are a few other things to remember when setting resource limits. Following are some general tips, suggestions, and miscellaneous comments. Processes started at system startup by /etc/rc are assigned to the daemon login class. Although the /etc/login.conf that comes with the system is a good source of reasonable values for most limits, only you, the administrator, can know what is appropriate for your system. Setting a limit too high may open your system up to abuse, while setting it too low may put a strain on productivity. Users of the X Window System (X11) should probably be granted more resources than other users. X11 by itself takes a lot of resources, but it also encourages users to run more programs simultaneously. Remember that many limits apply to individual processes, not the user as a whole. For example, setting openfiles to 50 means that each process the user runs may open up to 50 files. Thus, the gross amount of files a user may open is the value of openfiles multiplied by the value of maxproc. This also applies to memory consumption. For further information on resource limits and login classes and capabilities in general, please consult the relevant manual pages: &man.cap.mkdb.1;, &man.getrlimit.2;, &man.login.conf.5;. Personalizing Users Localization is an environment set up by the system administrator or user to accommodate different languages, character sets, date and time standards, and so on. This is discussed in the localization chapter. Groups groups /etc/groups accounts groups A group is simply a list of users. Groups are identified by their group name and GID (Group ID). In FreeBSD (and most other &unix; like systems), the two factors the kernel uses to decide whether a process is allowed to do something is its user ID and list of groups it belongs to. Unlike a user ID, a process has a list of groups associated with it. You may hear some things refer to the group ID of a user or process; most of the time, this just means the first group in the list. The group name to group ID map is in /etc/group. This is a plain text file with four colon-delimited fields. The first field is the group name, the second is the encrypted password, the third the group ID, and the fourth the comma-delimited list of members. It can safely be edited by hand (assuming, of course, that you do not make any syntax errors!). For a more complete description of the syntax, see the &man.group.5; manual page. If you do not want to edit /etc/group manually, you can use the &man.pw.8; command to add and edit groups. For example, to add a group called teamtwo and then confirm that it exists you can use: Adding a Group Using &man.pw.8; &prompt.root; pw groupadd teamtwo &prompt.root; pw groupshow teamtwo teamtwo:*:1100: The number 1100 above is the group ID of the group teamtwo. Right now, teamtwo has no members, and is thus rather useless. Let's change that by inviting jru to the teamtwo group. Adding Somebody to a Group Using &man.pw.8; &prompt.root; pw groupmod teamtwo -M jru &prompt.root; pw groupshow teamtwo teamtwo:*:1100:jru The argument to the option is a comma-delimited list of users who are members of the group. From the preceding sections, we know that the password file also contains a group for each user. The latter (the user) is automatically added to the group list by the system; the user will not show up as a member when using the command to &man.pw.8;, but will show up when the information is queried via &man.id.1; or similar tool. In other words, &man.pw.8; only manipulates the /etc/group file; it will never attempt to read additionally data from /etc/passwd. Using &man.id.1; to Determine Group Membership &prompt.user; id jru uid=1001(jru) gid=1001(jru) groups=1001(jru), 1100(teamtwo) As you can see, jru is a member of the groups jru and teamtwo. For more information about &man.pw.8;, see its manual page, and for more information on the format of /etc/group, consult the &man.group.5; manual page.