dovecot - Jun 2014 - Managing users and home dirs

For those of you using virtual users, and SQL, how are you managing
your users and their home dirs ? That is, what process do you use for
adding/deleting users, creating their home dirs etc ? I suppose it's
easy enough to do manually, inserting rows in the database, creating
dirs, chown/chmod yada yada, but there must be a better way to do it ...
If you're doing dovecot replication then it gets even more cumbersome,
having to duplicate the effort in two places (and make sure it's
correct). 

I have a nice test setup using Percona XtraDB Clustering in
a 3-node cluster which works swimmingly, albeit in VMs only at the
moment. A master DB node and two dovecot nodes. Dovecot replication is
up and running nicely too, and I almost have all the communications
going over ipsec tunnels, so it will be nice and secure. 

I'm thinking
of something like a cronjob with two tasks, the first would periodically
scan the home dirs and compare the users to what's in the database. When
it finds a new userdir (plus a file labeled PASSWD) the script would add
the user to the database, create the Maildir and whatever else, then
delete the PASSWD file. DB replication will push that to the other
nodes. 

The second task is scanning the user database and comparing to
the home dirs - basically opposite of the first cronjob. When it finds a
user in the DB that doesn't have a home dir, it would create it and
whatever else is needed. 

This way, to add a user one would just create
a PASSWD file in /var/mail/domain.com/newusername/PASSWD on either of
the dovecot replication partner systems. The first cronjob task would
discover the newusername dir, create the user in the DB, create the
Maildir, chown/chmod etc. and delete the PASSWD file, so it's ready to
go on that system. DB replication pushes the user table to the other
nodes. The second task on the other dovecot system will discover a new
user in the DB that doesn't have a home dir, and do its thing to create
it all. 

So the whole create-a-new-user process becomes something like
this on either dovecot system : 

mkdir -p
/var/mail/domain.com/newusername ; echo "changeme" >
/var/mail/domain.com/newusername/PASSWD 

A max of 5 minutes later the
user is added to the database, and the home dir/Maildir/etc/etc is
created on both dovecot systems. 

D.

Just a quick update on the below ... The 3-node setup is working
cleanly now. One master/backup DB node, two dovecot nodes, using Percona
Xtradb Cluster 5.5. All replication (percona and dovecot dsync) is via
ipsec tunnels. 

Adding a user or new domain is a matter of creating a
/var/mail/newusers.txt file, containing the list of users to be added.


john,doe.com,password,John Doe user 

A cronjob on both dovecot nodes
scans the user database and the /var/mail dirs. For any new users in the
file it adds them to the DB and creates their userdir/Maildir. Any new
user in the DB without a userdir, it creates their userdir/Maildir. So
it's a max of 5 minutes for a new user to be available on node1, and
another 5 minutes to be replicated to node2. Once the users are created,
the newusers.txt file is deleted. 

It would be nice to use a database
trigger to create the userdir/Maildir immediately rather than the
cronjob, but I haven't got that figured out yet. I found the
lib_mysqludf_sys UDF library, but it doesn't seem to be working. Some
issue with the db replication I think. 

Any ideas for creating a
directory from a mysql trigger ? 

On 2014-06-21 11:12,
deano-dovecot at areyes.com wrote: 
> For those of you using virtual
users, and SQL, how are you managing
> your users and their home dirs ?
That is, what process do you use for
> adding/deleting users, creating
their home dirs etc ? I suppose it's
> easy enough to do manually,
inserting rows in the database, creating
> dirs, chown/chmod yada yada,
but there must be a better way to do it ...
> If you're doing dovecot
replication then it gets even more cumbersome,
> having to duplicate the
effort in two places (and make sure it's
> correct). 
> 
> I have a nice
test setup using Percona XtraDB Clustering in
> a 3-node cluster which
works swimmingly, albeit in VMs only at the
> moment. A master DB node
and two dovecot nodes. Dovecot replication is
> up and running nicely
too, and I almost have all the communications
> going over ipsec
tunnels, so it will be nice and secure. 
> 
> D.

On 6/22/14, deano-dovecot at areyes.com <deano-dovecot at areyes.com>
wrote:
>
>
> For those of you using virtual users, and SQL, how are you managing
> your users and their home dirs ? That is, what process do you use for
> adding/deleting users, creating their home dirs etc ? I suppose it's
> easy enough to do manually, inserting rows in the database, creating
> dirs, chown/chmod yada yada, but there must be a better way to do it ...
> If you're doing dovecot replication then it gets even more cumbersome,
> having to duplicate the effort in two places (and make sure it's
> correct).
Simple perl script called directly, or even from control panel or
hosting management software that can call hooks to call the script.

but it adds them into the user DB, the mail DB, the http-auth DB  and
creates their own DB (we give users 1 mysql DB each)

you have a base path (say /var/vmail) you can use variables, substr,
and so on to simplify it
, once in the DB dovecot LDA automatically creates the users home dir
based on mail location and things ;like that

IOW, spending 10 mins to write teh script saves years of manual pain