2008/6/3 Jason Dixon :

quoted text
> On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 12:08:40PM -0400, Juan Miscaro wrote:

>> 2008/6/2 Jason Dixon :

>>

>> [...]

>>

>> >> >  In my case, I use Courier's authdaemond with MySQL, and Cyrus SASL's support for

>> >> >  authenticating against authdaemond.

>> >> >  I haven't read the link you posted, but just the idea of authenticating through PAM for

>> >> >  mail service makes me want to puke.

>> >>

>> >> [...]

>> >>

>> >> I happen to do be doing exactly what you are but I don't understand

>> >> the revulsion you harbour towards PAM in an email context.  Can you

>> >> elaborate?

>> >

>> > PAM is an over-engineered piece of bloatware.  Why would you want to

>> > abstract authentication when the bits you're using (Postfix/SASL,

>> > Courier) already have native mechanisms (SASL smtpd->authdaemond,

>> > Courier authdaemond) for talking to your backend store (MySQL)?

>>

>> Thank you.  I did hear, however, that you need to use PAM in order to

>> have credentials encrypted (on the backend) in the scenario we're

>> describing.  It felt weird populating MySQL with cleartext usernames

>> and passwords.

>

> Nope, you can store the md5-hashed passwords in MySQL.  Authdaemond

> reads them fine.

Ah, md5.  Is that still considered 'encryption'?  No, I'm not a troll,

just wanting to learn.
What do you think of using cleartext in the backend?  Is that a

terrible mistake?
/juan