
Overview
********

This chapter gives an overview of several aspects of the Cyrus IMAP
server, as they relate to deployment.


Access Control Lists
====================

Access to each mailbox is controlled by each mailbox's access control
list. Access Control Lists (ACLs) provide a powerful mechanism for
specifying the users or groups of users who have permission to access
the mailboxes.

An ACL is a list of zero or more entries. Each entry has an identifier
and a set of rights. The identifier specifies the user or group of
users for which the entry applies. The set of rights is one or more
letters or digits, each letter or digit conferring a particular
privilege.


Access Rights
-------------

The following lists Access Rights that can be used in an Access
Control List entry.

l
   The user may see that the mailbox exists (**lookup**).

r
   The user may read the mailbox (**read**).

   The user may select the mailbox, fetch data, perform searches, and
   copy messages from the mailbox.

s
   Keep per-user seen state (**seen**).

   The "Seen" and "Recent" flags are preserved for the user.

w
   The user may modify flags and keywords other than "Seen" and
   "Deleted" (which are controlled by other access rights).

i
   The user may insert new messages into the mailbox (**insert**).

p
   The user may send email to the submission address for the mailbox
   (**post**).

   This right differs from the "i" (**insert**) right in that the
   delivery system inserts trace information into messages posted,
   whereas no delivery trace information is added to messages inserted
   (by move or copy).

c
   The user may create new mailboxes in this mailbox, delete the
   current mailbox, or rename the mailbox (**create**).

d
   The user may store the "Deleted" flag, and perform expunges
   (**delete**).

a
   The user may change the *Access Control Information* (ACI) on the
   mailbox (**administer**).

You can combine these access rights in different ways. A few examples;

lrs
   Give the user read-only access to the mailbox (*lookup*, *read* and
   *seen*).

lrsp
   Give the user read access to the mailbox, and allow the user to
   post to the mailbox using the delivery system (*lookup*, *read*,
   *seen* and *post*). Most delivery systems do not provide
   authentication, so the "p" right usually has meaning only for the
   "anonymous" user.

lr
   The user can lookup and read the contents of the mailbox, but no
   "Seen" or "Recent" flags may be set on the mailbox nor its
   contents. This set of rights is primarily useful for anonymous
   IMAP, which is often used to make the archives of mailing lists
   available.

rs
   The user can read the mailbox and the server preserves the "Seen"
   and "Recent" flags, but the mailbox is not visible to the user
   through the various mailbox listing commands. The user must know
   the name of the mailbox to be able to access it.

lrsip
   The user can read and append to the mailbox, either through IMAP,
   or through the delivery system.


Identifiers
-----------

The identifier part of an ACL entry specifies the user or group for
which the entry applies.

There are two special identifiers, "anonymous", and "anyone", which
are explained below. The meaning of other identifiers usually depends
on the authorization mechanism being used (selected by "--with-auth"
at compile time, defaulting to Unix).


"anonymous" and "anyone"
------------------------

With any authorization mechanism, two special identifiers are defined.
The identifier "anonymous" refers to the anonymous, or unauthenticated
user. The identifier "anyone" refers to all users, including the
anonymous user.


Kerberos vs. Unix Authorization
-------------------------------

The Cyrus IMAP server comes with four authorization mechanisms, one is
compatible with Unix-style ("/etc/passwd") authorization, one for use
with Kerberos 4, one for use with Kerberos 5, and one for use with an
external authorization process (ptloader) which can interface with
other group databases (e.g. AFS PTS groups, LDAP Groups, etc).

Note: **Authentication !== Authorization**Note that authorization is
  *not* the same thing as authentication. Authentication is the act of
  proving who you are. Authorization is the act of determining what
  rights you have. Authentication is discussed in the Login
  Authentication part of this document.

In the Unix authorization mechanism, identifiers are either a valid
userid or the string "group": followed by a group listed in
"/etc/group". Thus:

   root                Refers to the user root
   group:staff         Refers to the group staff

It is also possible to use unix groups with users authenticated
through a non-/etc/passwd backend. Note that using unix groups in this
way (without associated "/etc/passwd" entries) is not recommended.

Using the Kerberos authorization mechanism, identifiers are of the
form:

   *$principal*.*$instance*@*$realm*

If "$instance" is omitted, it defaults to the null string. If "$realm"
is omitted, it defaults to the local realm.

The file "/etc/krb.equiv" contains mappings between Kerberos
principals. The file contains zero or more lines, each containing two
fields. Any identity matching the first field of a line is changed to
the second identity during canonicalization. For example, a line in
"/etc/krb.equiv" of:

   bovik@REMOTE.COM bovik

will cause the identity "bovik@REMOTE.COM" to be treated as if it were
the local identity "bovik".

A site may wish to write their own authorization mechanism, perhaps to
implement a local group mechanism. If it does so (by implementing an
"auth_[whatever]" PTS module), it will dictate its own form and
meaning of identifiers.


Negative Rights
---------------

Any of the above defined identifiers may be prefixed with a "-"
character. The associated rights are then removed from that
identifier. These are referred to as *negative rights*.


Calculating the Users' Rights
-----------------------------

To calculate the set of rights granted to a user, the server first
calculates the union of all of the rights granted to the user and to
all groups the user is a member of. The server then calculates and
removes the union of all the negative rights granted to the user and
to all groups the user is a member of.

   anyone       lrsp
   fred         lwi
   -anonymous   s

The user "fred" will be granted the rights "lrswip" and the anonymous
user will be granted the rights "lrp".


Implicit Rights for Administrators on Personal Mailboxes
--------------------------------------------------------

Regardless of the ACL on a mailbox, users who are listed in the
"admins" configuration option in imapd.conf(5) implicitly have the "l"
and "a" rights on all mailboxes. Users also implicitly have the "l"
and "a" rights on their INBOX and all of their personal mailboxes.


Initial ACLs for Newly Created Mailboxes
----------------------------------------

When a mailbox is created, its ACL starts off with a copy of the ACL
of its closest parent mailbox. When a user is created, the ACL on the
user's "INBOX" starts off with a single entry granting all rights to
the user. When a non-user mailbox is created and does not have a
parent, its ACL is initialized to the value of the "defaultacl" option
in imapd.conf(5).

Note that some rights are available implicitly, for example
'anonymous' always has 'p' on user INBOXes, and users always have
rights on mailboxes within their INBOX hierarchy.


Login Authentication
====================

This section discusses different types of authentication (ways of
logging in) that can be used with Cyrus IMAP.

The Cyrus IMAP server uses the Cyrus SASL library for authentication.
This section describes how to configure SASL with use with Cyrus
imapd. Please consult the Cyrus SASL System Administrator's Guide for
more detailed, up-to-date information.


Anonymous Login
---------------

Regardless of the SASL mechanism used by an individual connection, the
server can support anonymous login. If the "allowanonymouslogin"
option in imapd.conf(5) is turned on, then the server will permit
plaintext password logins using the user "anonymous" and any password.

Additionally, the server will enable any SASL mechanisms that allow
anonymous logins.


Plaintext Authentication
------------------------

The SASL library has several ways of verifying plaintext passwords.
Plaintext passwords are passed either by the IMAP "LOGIN" command or
by the SASL "PLAIN" mechanism (under a TLS layer).

* PAM

* Kerberos v4: Plaintext passwords are verified by obtaining a
  ticket for the server's Kerberos identity, to protect against
  Kerberos server spoofing attacks.

* "/etc/passwd"

* "/etc/shadow": "sasl_auto_transition" automatically creates
  secrets for shared secret authentication when given a password.

The method of plaintext password verification is always through the
SASL library, even in the case of the internal LOGIN command. This is
to allow the SASL library to be the only source of authentication
information. You'll want to look at the "sasl_pwcheck_method" option
in the SASL documentation to understand how to configure a plaintext
password verifier for your system.

To disallow the use of plaintext passwords for authentication, you can
set "allowplaintext: no" in imapd.conf. This will still allow PLAIN
under TLS, but IMAP LOGIN commands will now fail.


Kerberos Logins
---------------

The Kerberos SASL mechanism supports the "KERBEROS_V4" authentication
mechanism. The mechanism requires that a "srvtab" file exist in the
location given in the "srvtab" configuration option. The "srvtab" file
must be readable by the Cyrus server and must contain a
"imap.$host@$realm" service key, where "$host" is the first component
of the server's host name and "$realm" is the server's Kerberos realm.

The server will permit logins by identities in the local realm and
identities in the realms listed in the "loginrealms" option in
imapd.conf(5).

The file "/etc/krb.equiv" contains mappings between Kerberos
principals. The file contains zero or more lines, each containing two
fields. Any identity matching the first field of a line is permitted
to log in as the identity in the second field.

If the "loginuseacl" configuration option is turned on, than any
Kerberos identity that is granted the "a" right on the user's "INBOX"
is permitted to log in as that user.


Shared Secrets Logins
---------------------

Some mechanisms require the user and the server to share a secret
(generally a password) that can be used for comparison without
actually passing the password in the clear across the network. For
these mechanism (such as CRAM-MD5 and DIGEST-MD5), you will need to
supply a source of passwords, such as the sasldb (which is described
more fully in the Cyrus SASL distribution)


Quota
=====

Quotas allow server administrators to limit resources used by
hierarchies of mailboxes on the server.


Supports Quotas on Storage
--------------------------

The Cyrus IMAP server supports quotas on storage, which is defined as
the number of bytes of the relevant **RFC 822** messages, in
kilobytes. Each copy of a message is counted independently, even when
the server can conserve disk space use by making hard links to message
files. The additional disk space overhead used by mailbox index and
cache files is not charged against a quota.


Quota Roots
-----------

Quotas are applied to quota roots, which can be at any level of the
mailbox hierarchy. Quota roots need not also be mailboxes.

Quotas on a quota root apply to the sum of the usage of any mailbox at
that level and any sub-mailboxes of that level that are not underneath
a quota root on a sub-hierarchy. This means that each mailbox is
limited by at most one quota root.

For example, if the mailboxes

   user.bovik
   user.bovik.list.imap
   user.bovik.list.info-cyrus
   user.bovik.saved
   user.bovik.todo

exist and the quota roots

   user.bovik
   user.bovik.list
   user.bovik.saved

exist, then the quota root "user.bovik" applies to the mailboxes
"user.bovik" and "user.bovik.todo"; the quota root "user.bovik.list"
applies to the mailboxes "user.bovik.list.imap" and "user.bovik.list
.info-cyrus"; and the quota root "user.bovik.saved" applies to the
mailbox "user.bovik.saved".

Quota roots are created automatically when they are mentioned in the
"setquota" command. Quota roots may not be deleted through the
protocol, see Removing Quota Roots for instructions on how to delete
them.


Mail Delivery Behavior
----------------------

Normally, in order for a message to be inserted into a mailbox, the
quota root for the mailbox must have enough unused storage so that
inserting the message will not cause the block quota to go over the
limit.

Mail delivery is a special case. In order for a message to be
delivered to a mailbox, the quota root for the mailbox must not have
usage that is over the limit. If the usage is not over the limit, then
one message may be delivered regardless of its size. This puts the
mailbox's usage over the quota, causing a user to be informed of the
problem and permitting them to correct it. If delivery were not
permitted in this case, the user would have no practical way of
knowing that there was mail that could not be delivered.

If the usage is over the limit, then the mail delivery will fail with
a temporary error. This will cause the delivery system to re-attempt
delivery for a couple of days (permitting the user time to notice and
correct the problem) and then return the mail to the sender.


Quota Warnings Upon Select When User Has "d" Rights
---------------------------------------------------

When a user selects a mailbox whose quota root has usage that is close
to or over the limit and the user has "d" rights on the mailbox, the
server will issue an alert notifying the user that usage is close to
or over the limit. The threshold of usage at which the server will
issue quota warnings is set by the "quotawarn" configuration option.

The server only issues warnings when the user has "d" rights because
only users with "d" rights are capable of correcting the problem.


Quotas and Partitions
---------------------

Quota roots are independent of partitions. A single quota root can
apply to mailboxes in different partitions.


New Mail Notification
=====================

The Cyrus IMAP server comes with a notification daemon which supports
multiple mechanisms for notifying users of new mail. Notifications can
be configured to be sent upon normal delivery ("MAIL" class) and/or
sent as requested by a Sieve script ("SIEVE" class).

By default, both types of notifications are disabled. Notifications
are enabled by using one or both of the following configuration
options:

* the "mailnotifier" option selects the notifyd(8) method to use for
  "MAIL" class notifications

* the "sievenotifier" option selects the notifyd(8) method to use
  for "SIEVE" class notifications (when no method is specified by the
  Sieve action)


Partitions
==========

Partitions allow administrators to store different mailboxes in
different parts of the Unix filesystem.  This is intended to be used
to allow hierarchies of mailboxes to be spread across multiple disks.


Specifying Partitions with "create"
-----------------------------------

When an administrator creates a new mailbox, the name of the partition
for the mailbox may be specified using an optional second argument to
the "create" command.  Non-administrators are not permitted to specify
the partition of a mailbox.  If the partition is not specified, then
the mailbox inherits the partition of its most immediate parent
mailbox.  If the mailbox has no parent, it gets the partition
specified in the "defaultpartition" configuration option.

The optional second argument to the "create" command can usually be
given only when using a specialized Cyrus-aware administrative client
such as "cyradm".


Changing Partitions with "rename"
---------------------------------

An administrator may change the partition of a mailbox by using the
rename command with an optional third argument.  When a third argument
to rename is given, the first and second arguments can be the same;
this changes the partition of a mailbox without changing its name.  If
a third argument to rename is not given and the first argument is not
"INBOX", the partition of a mailbox does not change. If a third
argument to rename is not given and the first argument is "INBOX", the
newly created mailbox gets the same partition it would get from the
"create" command.


News
====

Cyrus has the ability to export Usenet via IMAP and/or export shared
IMAP mailboxes via an NNTP server which is included with Cyrus.


POP3 Server
===========

The Cyrus IMAP server software comes with a compatibility POP3 server.
Due to limitations in the POP3 protocol, the server can only access a
user's "INBOX" and only one instance of a POP3 server may exist for
any one user at any time.  While a POP3 server has a user's "INBOX"
open, expunge operations from any concurrent IMAP session will fail.

When Kerberos login authentication is being used, the POP3 server uses
the server identity "pop.host@realm" instead of "imap.host@realm",
where "host" is the first component of the server's host name and
"realm" is the server's Kerberos realm. When the POP3 server is
invoked with the "-k" switch, the server exports MIT's KPOP protocol
instead of generic POP3.


The syslog facility
===================

The Cyrus IMAP server software sends log messages to the "local6"
syslog facility.  The severity levels used are:

* **CRIT** - Critical errors which probably require prompt
  administrator action

* **ERR** - I/O errors, including failure to update quota usage. The
  syslog message includes the specific file and Unix error.

* **WARNING** - Protection mechanism failures, client inactivity
  timeouts

* **NOTICE** - Authentications, both successful and unsuccessful

* **INFO** - Mailbox openings, duplicate delivery suppression


Mail Directory Recovery
=======================

This section describes the various databases used by the Cyrus IMAP
server software and what can be done to recover from various
inconsistencies in these databases.


Reconstructing Mailbox Directories
----------------------------------

The largest database is the mailbox directories.  Each mailbox
directory contains the following files:

message files
   There is one file per message, containing the message in **RFC
   822** format.  Lines in the message are separated by CRLF, not just
   LF.  The file name of each message is the message's UID followed by
   a dot (.).

   In netnews newsgroups, the message files instead follow the format
   and naming conventions imposed by the netnews software.

"cyrus.header"
   This file contains a magic number and variable-length information
   about the mailbox itself.

"cyrus.index"
   This file contains fixed-length information about the mailbox
   itself and each message in the mailbox.

"cyrus.cache"
   This file contans variable-length information about each message in
   the mailbox.

"cyrus.seen"
   This file contains variable-length state information about each
   reader of the mailbox who has "s" permissions.

The "reconstruct" program can be used to recover from corruption in
mailbox directories.  If "reconstruct" can find existing header and
index files, it attempts to preserve any data in them that is not
derivable from the message files themselves.  The state "reconstruct"
attempts to preserve includes the flag names, flag state, and internal
date.  "Reconstruct" derives all other information from the message
files.

An administrator may recover from a damaged disk by restoring message
files from a backup and then running reconstruct to regenerate what it
can of the other files.

The "reconstruct" program does not adjust the quota usage recorded in
any quota root files.  After running reconstruct, it is advisable to
run "quota -f" (described below) in order to fix the quota root files.


Reconstructing the Mailboxes File
---------------------------------

Note: CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE

The mailboxes file in the configuration directory is the most critical
file in the entire Cyrus IMAP system.  It contains a sorted list of
each mailbox on the server, along with the mailboxes quota root and
ACL.

To reconstruct a corrupted mailboxes file, run the "reconstruct -m"
command.  The "reconstruct" program, when invoked with the "-m"
switch, scavenges and corrects whatever data it can find in the
existing mailboxes file.  It then scans all partitions listed in the
imapd.conf file for additional mailbox directories to put in the
mailboxes file.

The "cyrus.header" file in each mailbox directory stores a redundant
copy of the mailbox ACL, to be used as a backup when rebuilding the
mailboxes file.


Reconstructing Quota Roots
--------------------------

The subdirectory "quota" of the configuration directory (specified in
the "configdirectory" configuration option) contains one file per
quota root, with the file name being the name of the quota root.
These files store the quota usage and limits of each of the quota
roots.

The "quota" program, when invoked with the "-f" switch, recalculates
the quota root of each mailbox and the quota usage of each quota root.


Removing Quota Roots
--------------------

To remove a quota root, remove the quota root's file.  Then run "quota
-f" to make the quota files consistent again.


Subscriptions
-------------

The subdirectory "user" of the configuration directory contains user
subscriptions.  There is one file per user, with a filename of the
userid followed by ".sub".  Each file contains a sorted list of
subscribed mailboxes.

There is no program to recover from damaged subscription files.  A
site may recover from lost subscription files by restoring from
backups.


Configuration Directory
=======================

Many objects in the configuration directory are discussed in the
Database Recovery section. This section documents two other
directories that reside in the configuration directory.


Log Directory
-------------

The subdirectory "log" under the configuration directory permits
administrators to keep protocol telemetry logs on a per-user basis.

If a subdirectory of "log" exists with the same name as a user, the
IMAP and POP3 servers will keep a telemetry log of protocol sessions
authenticating as that user.  The telemetry log is stored in the
subdirectory with a filename of the server process-id and starts with
the first command following authentication.


Proc Directory
--------------

The subdirectory "proc" under the configuration directory contains one
file per active server process.  The file name is the ASCII
representation of the process id and the file contains the following
tab-separated fields:

* hostname of the client

* login name of the user, if logged in

* selected mailbox, if a mailbox is selected

The file may contain arbitrary characters after the first newline
character.

The "proc" subdirectory is normally be cleaned out on server reboot.


Message Delivery
================

Mail transport agents such as Sendmail, Postfix, or Exim communicate
with the Cyrus server via LMTP (the Local Mail Transport Protocol)
implemented by the LMTP daemon.  This can be done either directly by
the MTA (prefered, for performance reasons) or via the "deliver" LMTP
client.


Local Mail Transfer Protocol (lmtp)
-----------------------------------

LMTP, the Local Mail Transfer Protocol, is a variant of SMTP design
for transferring mail to the final message store.  LMTP allows MTAs to
deliver "local" mail over a network.  This is an easy optimization so
that the IMAP server doesn't need to maintain a queue of messages or
run an MTA.

The Cyrus server implements LMTP via the "lmtpd" daemon.  LMTP can
either be used over a network via TCP or local via a UNIX domain
socket. There are security differnces between these two alternatives;
read more below.

For final delivery via LMTP over a TCP socket, it is necessary to use
LMTP AUTH.  This is accomplished using SASL to authenticate the
delivering user.  If your mail server is performing delivery via LMTP
AUTH (that is, using a SASL mechanism), you will want their
authentication id to be an LMTP admins (either via the "admins"
imapd.conf option or via the "<service>_admins" option, typically
"lmtp_admins").

Alternatively you may deliver via LMTP to a unix domain socket, and
the connection will be preauthenticated as an administrative user (and
access control is accomplished by controlling access to the socket).

Note that if a user has a sieve script, the sieve script runs
authorized as *that* user, and the rights of the posting user are
ignored for the purposes of determining the outcome of the sieve
script.


Single Instance Store
---------------------

If a delivery attempt mentions several recipients (only possible if
the MTA is speaking LMTP to "lmtpd"), the server attempts to store as
few copies of a message as possible.  It will store one copy of the
message per partition, and create hard links for all other recipients
of the message.

Single instance store can be turned off by using the
"singleinstancestore" flag in the configuration file.


Duplicate Delivery Suppression
------------------------------

A message is considered a duplicate if two copies of a message with
the same message-id and the same envelope receipient are received.
Cyrus uses the duplicate delivery database to hold this information,
and it looks approximately 3 days back in the default install.

Duplicate delivery suppression can be turned off by using the
"duplicatesuppression" flag in the configuration file.


Sieve, a Mail Filtering Language
================================

Sieve is a mail filtering language that can filter mail into an
appropriate IMAP mailbox as it is delivered via lmtp.


Cyrus Murder, the IMAP Aggregator
=================================

Cyrus now supports the distribution of mailboxes across a number of
IMAP servers to allow for horizontal scalability.
