dovecot - Aug 2008 - related, but off-topic: how to allow users to change password?

My dovecot is currently configured to authenticate vs. a userdb/passdb 
passwd-file that contains, for each user:

username:passhash:5000:5000::/path/to/home::userdb_mail=/path/to/maildir
                                       
Is it possible to let users authenticate and change their passwords?  There 
are some webmail client add-ons that allow such things if users are system 
accounts or in a MySQL/LDAP db.  Does anyone else use passdb/userdb 
passwd-files like above and have a method for allowing users to change their 
passwords from the web?

Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but hoping another Dovecot admin 
has solved this problem.  Preference is to not to be tied to any particular 
webmail client just for this change password feature.

Hi Sahil,

On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 02:36:56 -0400, Sahil Tandon <sahil at tandon.net>
wrote:
> My dovecot is currently configured to authenticate vs. a userdb/passdb 
> passwd-file that contains, for each user:
> 
> username:passhash:5000:5000::/path/to/home::userdb_mail=/path/to/maildir
>                                        
> Is it possible to let users authenticate and change their passwords? 
> There 
> are some webmail client add-ons that allow such things if users are
system
> 
> accounts or in a MySQL/LDAP db.  Does anyone else use passdb/userdb 
> passwd-files like above and have a method for allowing users to change
> their 
> passwords from the web?
> 
> Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but hoping another Dovecot
> admin 
> has solved this problem.  Preference is to not to be tied to any
> particular 
> webmail client just for this change password feature.
Maybe you can use Usermin for that (see
http://www.webmin.com/usermin.html). It has a module to change system
passwords.

Patrick.

-- 
STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.            http://www.star-group.net/
Phone:    +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826             Fax:   +86 (21) 3462 7779

PGP key:         https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc
Fingerprint:           E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005

Sahil Tandon wrote:
> My dovecot is currently configured to authenticate vs. a userdb/passdb 
> passwd-file that contains, for each user:
>
> username:passhash:5000:5000::/path/to/home::userdb_mail=/path/to/maildir
>                                        
> Is it possible to let users authenticate and change their passwords?  There
> are some webmail client add-ons that allow such things if users are system 
> accounts or in a MySQL/LDAP db.  Does anyone else use passdb/userdb 
> passwd-files like above and have a method for allowing users to change
their
> passwords from the web?
>
> Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but hoping another Dovecot admin
> has solved this problem.  Preference is to not to be tied to any particular
> webmail client just for this change password feature.
>   
There isn't a general utility to do that. I wrote a simple script for
one such case, namely sork-passwd from the Horde suite. The script just
receives the username, old password and new password from stdin and then
changes the password entry in a file. But I'm using only passwd files,
without the extra fields in a userdb file. Besides that, there are other
things that could have been done in a better way.

If you want to take a look, I posted it here some time ago:
http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2008-June/031629.html

-- 
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
eduardo at kalinowski.com.br
http://move.to/hpkb

Patrick Nagel <patrick.nagel at star-group.net> wrote:
> Maybe you can use Usermin for that (see
> http://www.webmin.com/usermin.html). It has a module to change system
> passwords.
Thanks for the tip Patrick.  Unfortunately this will not work for me 
because I need to change passwords for virtual users -- the users are not 
system users found in /etc/passwd, but rather virtual users that are 
listed in a passwd style file in /usr/local/etc/dovecot/passwd.

-- 
Sahil Tandon <sahil at tandon.net>

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Hi Sahil,

Sahil Tandon wrote:
| Thanks for the tip Patrick.  Unfortunately this will not work for me
| because I need to change passwords for virtual users -- the users are not
| system users found in /etc/passwd, but rather virtual users that are
| listed in a passwd style file in /usr/local/etc/dovecot/passwd.

Oh, read your mail too quickly... sorry.

Patrick.

- --
STAR Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.            http://www.star-group.net/
Phone:    +86 (21) 3462 7688 x 826             Fax:   +86 (21) 3462 7779

PGP key:         https://stshacom1.star-china.net/keys/patrick_nagel.asc
Fingerprint:           E09A D65E 855F B334 E5C3 5386 EF23 20FC E883 A005
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