DbMail Administrator (DBMA) Main Menu Help
Global Mail System Administration

The best place to perform most functions is from the User Account Window

When adding a user and alias, DBMA will check the RFC compliance of the email address. (Note: You do not have to set an alias at this time.) If for some reason, like a fallback alias for a LAN (i.e.: @LANdomain.int), you can bypass the alias checking "on" Force Bypass RFC-Compliant Alias Check. This is generally not a good practise for production systems.

1) Through a serious of SQL queries and commands, DBMA sets message status 003 for all mail marked for deletion. That will escalate the deletion process. Status for messages flagged for deletion in some cases could be 000, 001,or 002 depending on the DbMail version you are using. As well as clearing up some previous issues with older DbMail versions this tool accelerates the cleanup process nicely.

2) DBMA also marks for deletion any completely orphaned messages having no mailbox nor owner. These orphans can occur due to vagaries in the database or the DBMS and the type of database you are using. Broken or incomplete indexes or cascading routines can cause this to happen as well as administrative errors. This tool allows you to manually perform the function of a schedules crontab utilities run. Note: If DBMA finds some orphaned messages it will first set their status to 001. Your command line (crontab) utility will then escalate them to 002 then 003 then delete them. You can speed that up by selecting 'Database Cleanup' a second time, and any orphaned messages marked 001 will be escalated to 003 and deleted from the database on the next Utility/Maintenance run. This two staged approach takes into consideration that this is a very rare occurrence; is likely caused by manually 'messing with the database'; and the fact that you may have by other means deleted a user, giving you time to manually recreate that user at the proper user_idnr. In future versions, DBMA will fully delete these immediately after reporting what if any exist .

3) DBMA deletes all unattached (orphaned) mailboxes.

Remember that once you have created the infrastructure and assigned some administrative rights (SETACL) to key trusted users, your Shared Folder Forest under #Users is likely to grow fast. #Public folders can be controlled exclusively by you, the Mail System Administrator, or you can give Administrative Access Rights to #Public/folders to trusted users or Group Admins.

How to Start Sharing Folders
Select "ACL" from the main screen. Type the name of the folder you wish to create and press "Create Shared Folder." DBMA will do the rest. DBMA will assign limited user access rights to "anyone". If "anyone or __public__ does not exist on your system, DBMA will create them for you.

The Global function screen for ACLs also has an Access Rights tool for manually adding a folder to a users ACL or updating any user for any shared folder. Be careful how you use this as it is a powerful and highly flexible tool.

Any User Account Window provides a means to manage specific user access rights to shared folders. You can permit users to have higher privileged access rights or even administration rights. To understand these rights, hold your cursor over the text block at the bottom which corresponds to the item for which you seek help. Or click help.

Once you have your shared folders set up and appropriate user rights assigned (for anyone), you will want to get your email client configured to subscribe to these folders. The internet is abound with opinions on what is the best email MUA (Mail User Agent - Email Client). If you are using Thunderbird or a fairly new Mozilla Mail, you are in luck. These MUAs will "subscribe" to the shared folders in a flash. You can drag and drop or copy to, move to or whatever you like in these folders.

Here is a usage example of IMAP4 Shared Folders. Let's say you have some pictures you want to show many people on your mail server. Create a folder or use what you have and create a message containing your pictures and save it in your drafts folder with a subject line "Pictures of me Winning The Lottery" or whatever. Next, select the email in your drafts folder and copy it to your "Common Shared Folder". Now 'anyone' has access. Hopefully your target audience is not using one of the ACL Shared Folders 'unfriendly' MUAs. You perhaps can share the following advice.

With Microsoft's Outlook Express and Outlook you will need to do a little coaxing. Select the account and click on "IMAP4 Folders". Don't try to first subscribe to #Public after you "Reset List". Instead, select just the sub folders of #Public and subscribe to them. Close the "Folders" window. Reset the list of folders. Next open "IMAP4 Folders" again and select #Public. Close. This two-step process of subscribing to the subfolders first and then later subscribing to the root #Public seems to work. You should be in business.

Sharing a Users' Folders
This is normally done with an ACL-friendly MUA but DBMA can help you create much of what the user can do from their MUA if it is easier to do it for them than explain how; or in the event that your user has made a mistake and you are on a repair mission.
In the drop-down display of available ACL-eligible folders in the User Account Window you will see all of the "#Public" folders plus all of the users folders. They are all eligible for sharing. Example for User Account Window for: Bob

#Public/common
bob/INBOX
bob/Trash
bob/Sent
bob/shared

If you select and add a set of Access Rights to "bob/shared", it will be available across the system under #Users but no one will be able to share it unless you assign Access Rights to additional users; or allow bob SETACL (Admin) rights for that folder and he can do it all for you.

You manage individual user rights from the User Account Window and manage #Public and #User rights from the global Access Control List Tools (select ACL on the Main Screen).
Assigning rights to #Users/folder can be done with the DBMA Access Control List Tools after the #User/folder has been shared from the User Account Window. The first step is to go to the User Account Window, create the shared folder by assigning the owner full Access Rights. Next you return to the DBMA ACL Tools and select the new shared #User/folder you created and one after another add the users needing access rights on this folder.

ACL Permissions set to 1-On or 0-Off
lookup: mailbox is visible to LIST/LSUB commands
read: SELECT the mailbox, perform CHECK, FETCH, PARTIAL SEARCH, COPY from mailbox
seen: keep seen/unseen information across session
write: STORE flags other than SEEN and DELETED
insert: perform APPEND, COPY into mailbox
post: send mail to submission address for mailbox
create: CREATE new sub-mailboxes in any implementation defined hierarchy
delete: STORE DELETED flag perform EXPUNGE
administer: perform SETACL

This Compares to the RFC 2086 - IMAP4 ACL extension definition
The ACL extension is present in any IMAP4 implementation which returns "ACL" as one of the supported capabilities to the CAPABILITY command. This is something DbMail does very well. It may be one of the best. An access control list is a set of identifier,rights pairs. Identifier is a US-ASCII string. The identifier anyone is reserved to refer to the universal identity (all authentications, including anonymous). All user name strings accepted by the LOGIN or AUTHENTICATE commands to authenticate to the IMAP4 server are reserved as identifiers for the corresponding user. Identifiers starting with a dash ("-") are reserved for "negative rights", described below. All other identifier strings are interpreted in an implementation- defined manner.
Rights is a string listing a (possibly empty) set of alphanumeric characters, each character listing a set of operations which is being controlled. Letters are reserved for ``standard'' rights, listed below. The set of standard rights may only be extended by a standards-track document. Digits are reserved for implementation or site defined rights. The currently defined standard rights are:
l - lookup (mailbox is visible to LIST/LSUB commands)
r - read (SELECT the mailbox, perform CHECK, FETCH, PARTIAL, SEARCH, COPY from mailbox)
s - keep seen/unseen information across sessions (STORE SEEN flag)
w - write (STORE flags other than SEEN and DELETED)
i - insert (perform APPEND, COPY into mailbox)
p - post (send mail to submission address for mailbox, not enforced by IMAP4 itself)
c - create (CREATE new sub-mailboxes in any implementation-defined hierarchy)
d - delete (STORE DELETED flag, perform EXPUNGE)
a - administer (perform SETACL)

'User Account Window' with all features turned on. If you are not using features, turn them off in the Configuration Window to reduce the clutter.

Do this from "Configurations" Window

dbmail-lmtp:127.0.0.1:24

in main.cf:
=========
mailbox_transport = mysql:/etc/postfix/transport.cf 
transport.cf
===========
user=dbmail
password=dbmail
dbname=dbmail
hosts=127.0.0.1
table=DBMA_MTA
select_field=transport
where_field=mydestination

The command line:
% postmap -q localhost mysql:/etc/postfix/transport.cf

will return:
% dbmail-lmtp:127.0.0.1:24

master.cf
========
dbmail-lmtp unix    -   -       n       -       -       lmtp
dbmail-smtp unix    -   n       n       -       -       pipe
        flags=  user=dbmail:dbmail
        argv=/usr/local/sbin/dbmail-smtp -d ${recipient}

$mydomain 
mail.$mydomain
$myhostname 
[127.0.0.1] 
[192.168.100.20] # Example LAN address if applies
[216.239.57.107] # Example WAN address if applies 

mydestination = mycriticaldomain.com
 myothercriticaldoman.com
 mysql:/etc/postfix/mydestination.cf

+---------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 
| Field         | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra | 
+---------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 
| mydestination | varchar(35)  |      | PRI |         |       | 
| transport     | varchar(128) |      |     |         |       | 
+---------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 

in Postfix's main.cf
===================
smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
.../ 
check_client_access mysql:/etc/postfix/DBMA_MTA_Access.cf,
check_sender_access mysql:/etc/postfix/DBMA_MTA_Access.cf,
check_recipient_access mysql:/etc/postfix/DBMA_MTA_Access.cf,
\...

DBMA_MTA_Access.cf
================
user=dbmail
password=dbmail
dbname=dbmail
hosts=127.0.0.1
table=DBMA_MTA_ACCESS
select_field=action
where_field=sender

The command line:
% postmap -q evilhackers.com mysql:/etc/postfix/DBMA_MTA_Access.cf

will return:
% REJECT

FREE.STEALTH.MAILER@            550 We don't accept mail from spammers
another.source.of.spam          REJECT                                
okay.cyberspammer.com           OK                                    
128.32                          RELAY                                 

CREATE TABLE  DBMA_MTA_Access  (
  myid  int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  sender  varchar(128) NOT NULL default '',
  action  varchar(25) NOT NULL default 'REJECT',
  PRIMARY KEY  (myid),
  UNIQUE KEY  sender  (sender)
) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='MTA acces table' AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

+--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field  | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| myid   | int(5)       |      | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| sender | varchar(128) |      | UNI |         |                |
| action | varchar(25)  |      |     | REJECT  |                |
+--------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+