Re: PATCH: disable mailbox delivery

On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 17:15, John Hohm wrote:
> > The problem is that you are disabling the mailRoutingAddress attribute,
> > while keeping the mailLocalAddress attribute.
> 
> Creating a user and choosing "None (no mailbox. Just forwardings)" for
> the "Create mailbox on server" also results in a mailLocalAddress
> being generated but no mailRoutingAddress.

Very much true, and it leads to the same buggy mail configuration as
long there is no "Mail Forwarding" entered.
 
> > This causes postfix to accept the mail (due to valid maillocaladdress)
> > but can't deliver it (missing mailroutingaddress) resulting in a mail
> > loop (mx lookup, redeliver to mx which is the host itself) with a final
> > mailbounce.
> 
> Would not the same thing happen if you created a user without a
> mailbox and failed to set any forwarding addresses?

Exactly (see above).

> The point of the patch is to handle the case where a user wants his
> mail forwarded, and no longer wants it to also be delivered to our
> system.  The resulting LDAP data is identical to a "None (no mailbox.
> Just forwardings)" user except that mailHost is still set, allowing
> mailRoutingAddress to be regenerated and the existing (but inactive)
> mailbox to be identified.

Hmm... sound's a bit shaky from an admin's point of view (having
"stealth" mailboxes that eat up space for the user's lifetime), but
that's just a personal feeling ;)

> > A proper solution is not that easy IMHO:
> > To properly disable mail for an user, the maillocaladdress has to be
> > changed/deleted, which could be a problem when mail retreival is enabled
> > again (attribute value may not be recoverable).
> 
> But I do not want to disable mail for the user, only mailbox delivery.

Ahh, that was probably the misunderstanding here.
I considered it a *disabling* of mail, indeed.

> A more thorough patch might go so far as to delete the mailbox (and
> remove the mailHost attribute), but I was a little squeamish about
> deleting mailboxes, and some users want a period of time to move their
> mail from our mailbox to their forwarded mailbox.

My intention behind all this is, to avoid pitfalls in the adminUI.
In this case I fell in it completely ;) and so may other users, too.

So, maybe your patch need's just some enhancements:
* only allow "suspend" when mailForwardingAddress is set
* only allow selection when mailHost is set (otherwise forwarding-only
users are enabled for local delivery without having mailHost)


Joerg




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