On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 09:57:38PM -0600, Ben Lutgens wrote: > why give them home dirs and no shell access? Why have procmail if they can't > _use_ it? provide mail via pop / imap. No shell access. and all is well. While I don't think I should go into details (pesky NDAs...), I can say that we have an external process which certain email messages need to be piped through. Each user can choose for themselves which messages get sent to this process. I've already set up an inetd-based pseudo-daemon which manipulates a procmail ruleset to control this filtering on a per-user basis and another developer has created a web-based front end for it. We already have internal users who refuse to even consider looking at a unix box, but are using this web-based interface to manipulate procmail filters without using a shell or even knowing that any sort of general procmail-like tool exists. They just say, "I want X to be done with messages from Bob," and it magically happens. The home dirs are being used because, on our internal email server, they already have home dirs (although, again, most of them don't know it) and it's the obvious place to put per-user configuration information. And I think I've already shown that, although they may not be able to tap the full power of procmail, they are able to use it. We're not providing _just_ email access; it's one part of a bigger product. (A part we didn't originally intend to handle ourselves, but trying to tie someone else's email service into the rest of our system in this way hasn't turned out as well as management thought, so now they're asking me about bringing the email part in-house too.) -- "Two words: Windows survives." - Craig Mundie, Microsoft senior strategist "So does syphillis. Good thing we have penicillin." - Matthew Alton Geek Code 3.1: GCS d? s+: a- C++ UL++$ P++>+++ L+++>++++ E- W--(++) N+ o+ !K w---$ O M- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5++ X+ R++ tv b+ DI++++ D G e* h+ r y+