Feedback wanted on Virtual Hosts
acoliver Oct 10, 2005 4:30 PMI originally sent this to Eric (one of our administrator dudes) at jboss... However I thought the group might be able to help too:
One of the things I'm working on right now for JBMS is virtual hosts. Meaning one mail server handling mail for multiple domains.
For mail transport, it is fairly straightforward. For authentication and delivery it is less so.
Postfix requires you to map mail addresses to real accounts. Meaning
andy@jboss.org maps to acoliver (UNIX account for instance)
andy@jboss.com maps to andy (UNIX account for instance).
We presently don't support vhosts but thats what I'm working on now. We do however allow you to utilize JBossAS login modules including LDAP/DB.
I kind of don't like the mapping concept from an admistration standpoint (but I'm interested in your thoughts). It requires someone to maintain a mapping outside of their normal authentication structure.
The reason this cannot work like http is that the SMTP/POP protocols do not pass the domain the user connected to (HTTP does).
Possibilities for our implementation:
0. mapping - same deal.
1. restriction - user = emailaddress (user@domain.com). This would mean that andy could only be on jboss.org or jboss.com but not both.
2. fixed rule - accounts = user{seperator}domain. Meaning andy@jboss.com would be "andy-jboss.com" and andy@jboss.org would be "andy-jboss.org" or possibly "andy-jbosscom" "andy-jbossorg"
3. password - andy@jboss.org and andy@jboss.com both map to andy. The accounts are differentiated by password. This means both users have to pick different passwords. This will likely mean that the authentication will be routed to one login module then fail over to another (up to "n" where n = number of domains * x, x = number of login modules per security domain [usually 1])
4. dynamic rewrite - a regular expression rewrites the account into the address and vice versa.
What do you think would be the most reasonable and most admisterable (if that is a word) option or combination of options? Which is "best" (highest priority)? Why?