dovecot - Nov 2007 - Using Dovecot as Asterisk PBX voicemail server

I'm reading the Asterisk book, 2nd edition, and it describes how one can 
set up voicemail to be delivered by IMAP to a voicemail folder. Asterisk 
can monitor flags on the folder so that the "message available" light
on
one's phone tracks the state of the "read" flag in the folder. One
can
either dial in for one's voicemail or listen to it from one's favorite
IMAP
client. (Dovecot is mentioned in the book.)

I'm wondering how one would set up auth for this? Asterisk needs to log in 
to the account to deliver the voicemail and to check its state, but I 
wouldn't want to put everyone's mail password in plaintext in
Asterisk's
voicemail.conf file.

Would I set up a separate IMAP account for each user to hold their 
voicemail, and use simple passwords (such as the PIN they use for phone 
access to voicemail) in the Asterisk config? Or is there a way to set up 
Dovecot to allow a second user to login to a specific IMAP folder in all 
accounts, in the same way the local delivery agent has write access to all 
users' mailbox?

Google's page for the book:

<http://books.google.com/books?id=vtQxJ3oSm64C&dq=asterisk+book>

Dovecot mentions:

<http://books.google.com/books?id=vtQxJ3oSm64C&dq=asterisk+book&q=dovecot#search>

On Nov 12, 2007, at 6:40 PM, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> I'm reading the Asterisk book, 2nd edition, and it describes how one  
> can set up voicemail to be delivered by IMAP to a voicemail folder.
[snip]
> Or is there a way to set up Dovecot to allow a second user to login  
> to a specific IMAP folder in all accounts, in the same way the local  
> delivery agent has write access to all users' mailbox?
One possible solution is that you grant Asterisk access to the  
mailboxes with as a master user with a  (strong) master password.  See  
the wiki for more information:

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Authentication/MasterUsers

-Andrew

Kenneth Porter wrote:
> I'm wondering how one would set up auth for this? Asterisk needs to
> log in to the account to deliver the voicemail and to check its state,
> but I wouldn't want to put everyone's mail password in plaintext in
> Asterisk's voicemail.conf file.
Not sure, but have you tried to use pre-encrypted password like
"{HMAC-MD5}asfgasf7a9s6 f865sf..." ? Dovecot supports encrypted
passwords.
> Would I set up a separate IMAP account for each user to hold their
> voicemail, and use simple passwords (such as the PIN they use for
> phone access to voicemail) in the Asterisk config? Or is there a way
> to set up Dovecot to allow a second user to login to a specific IMAP
> folder in all accounts, in the same way the local delivery agent has
> write access to all users' mailbox?
I think shared folders and virtual user setup is right choise here. Set
up virtual users sharing one real uid (to easy avoid any access rigthts
problems). Share their "Voicemail" folders for
"Asterick-deliver-user".
Deliver messages to appropriate shared folder in
"Asterick-deliver-users" account. Sharing folders for such virtual
users
can be easy done using symlinks/ hardliks as they all share one real
system uid.

Uldis

--On Monday, November 12, 2007 6:49 PM -0500 Andrew Girling 
<agirling at denetron.com> wrote:
> One possible solution is that you grant Asterisk access to the  mailboxes
> with as a master user with a  (strong) master password.  See  the wiki
> for more information:
>
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/Authentication/MasterUsers
Excellent, that looks like a perfect solution to the problem.