[COLUG] Postfix or LDAP question

[William Yang]

Aaron Howard wrote:
> I have set up a "Postfix + MailScanner + SpamAssassin + ClamAV" SMTP
> mail gateway for a customer of mine but have a question I hoped
> somebody might be able to help me with.
> 
> Postfix is presently set to forward all mail destined for local
> mailboxes to my customer's internal Exchange server and this works
> fine.  The only issue is I have to have user accounts on the Postfix
> box in order for it to think they're local before it will accept
> e-mail from them.  That, in and of itself, is not so bad.  I can
> easily create those user accounts on the Postfix box easily enough.
> 
> What I'd like, however, is to set it up so it will stay in sync with
> the Exchange server.  That is, if they add a new user, I'd want the
> Postfix box to see it.  If they delete a mailbox, same thing.
> 
> Is this more of an LDAP integration issue?

Well, it depends.  You can always cache the results of some kind of probe 
against the SMTP service.... but you may want to just pull the information 
directly out of LDAP periodically and cache that, instead, or query against 
as needed if you trust the connection to and the processing power of the 
Exchange box.  ActiveDirectory's ldap key for e-mail addresses when used 
with recent Microsoft Exchange is, as I recall, 'mail'...

Or, you can link against the LDAP service directly for usernames and 
passwords (think something like nss_ldap).  I probably wouldn't do that if 
you didn't have to, because it will also require component changes to the 
AD system somewhere along the line: the problem is simpler and more 
self-contained if you can minimize the reliance on AD.

	-Bill
-- 
William Yang
wyang at gcfn.net