I'm pretty much a Linux idiot, so please bear with me.

I am currently running an email server on RH 8.0 with qmail, maildrop, and courier-IMAP. For authentication I'm using authuserdb. I have several virtual users and this setup works great with various mail clients we use (Kmail, Evolution, Outlook).

Now, I am trying to add Sqwebmail (3.5.1). Sqwebmail seems to run fine. I get the login screen, but I cannot log in. I always get Invalid user id or password. I have tried user id's with and without domain names and the passwords I defined in /etc/userdb.dat -- nothing works.

I used the default settings when I installed Sqwebmail. I believe Sqwebmail is failing to access authuserdb for user id's and passwords. How do I configure Sqwebmail to use authuserdb? Is there some script or configuration file I need to change?

Please help.

Thanks,
Apollo

ok, I'm getting close on this now, but still not quite there.

The password I set up in /etc/userdb.dat is for IMAP (set imappw). However, Sqwebmail is not looking for the IMAP password during login, right? So what is it looking for? systempw, maybe? These are virtual users, so I'm wondering if systempw makes sense. Does anyone know?

I seem to be having a conversation with myself here. Anyways, I have solved my problem, so I will post the solution to hopefully help anyone having similar difficulties who is as Linux illiterate as me.

First, I added systempw into userdb ("set systempw" in addition to set "imappw") for my virtual users. I'm not 100% sure if this made any difference, but I'm too tired right now to track that down. Suffice it to say, it did no harm and may be necessary.

Secondly, these two instructions appear in the sparse documentation on Sqwebmail:

#1. run "/usr/lib/courier/libexec/authlib/authdaemond start" at boot. That is, add it to your boot scripts.

#2. Set the following as a cron job to run hourly:
su bin -c "/usr/lib/courier/share/sqwebmail/cleancache.pl" .

Ok fine, but as a newbie, I had no clue what to do with these two instructions. What are my boot scripts? What's a cron job? I often wish people would take a little more time and explain the obvious for idiots like me. So here's my interpretation ... someone correct me if I am wrong:

#1.
run "/usr/lib/courier/libexec/authlib/authdaemond start" needs to be placed in /etc/rc.d/rc.local (at least in my RH 8.0 setup).

#2
su bin -c "/usr/lib/courier/share/sqwebmail/cleancache.pl" needs to be preceeded by a shebang (#!/bin/sh) and placed in a file (call it anything you want) located in /etc/cron.hourly.

I am less sure of #2.

Having made these changes, Sqwebmail now works. Phew.

Even though you had a conversation with yourself, I appreciate you putting it up here. A google search turned it up, and fixed my problem.

Very cool. It took 2 months, but I thought this might just help somebody out there.

BTW, in the end I couldn't stand Sqwebmail. We had earlier used Openwebmail. IMO the Openwebmail interface is much more pleasing and easier to use. It also has many more useful features. I ended up reverting back to Openwebmail for web access to email. The main problem with Openwebmail is no support for IMAP or Maildir. I have to use POP3 which I'm not pleased about. However, I expect Maildir or IMAP support to be added at some point in the future (soon I hope).

I ramble.

Glad this helped you tvilot!

Apollo

Perhaps your are not as much of a "Linux idiot" as you thought. Do some searching around and I am sure you will find some though, particularly one in the "General" forum that I wasted 2 hours of my life reading.

Enough ranting.

Have you checked out SquirrelMail. I use that and find it works pretty well. All PHP based, so a simple module addition to Apache is all that is needed (if it is not already there). I believe it does imap as well, but I don't know about Maildir (unless that is where it reads mail from files in the users home directory, which it does).