popbsmtpd-users
Interesting phenomenom with popbsmtpd/engarde
Marcus,
I hate to send you e-mail without having found more information in a
mailing list somewhere first -- but would love your insight
nonetheless... (it's 415am my time, and I've given up searching :-)
I've configured and implemented popbsmtpd on a soon-to-be-production
mailserver. Strangely, when a user would pop his mail, popbsmtpd would
set the cutoff time to a time of "auth_duration" minutes -earlier- than
the current time. The end result of this is that authentication for
smtp transactions was immediately allowed, then immediately thereafter
disallowed.
I stopped and restarted popbsmtpd several times, testing new values,
and now it seems as though everything is working fine, but I'm still a
bit confused by the "current time/cutoff time" values, as they seem to
be backwards to me. I'm worried this will again cause me problems in
the future.
Current log entries produced by popbsmtpd with auth_duration set to 120:
popbsmtpd: Waiting for event; timeout in 3492 seconds
popbsmtpd: INPUT DATA: "Dec 13 02:03:19 puzi spop3[27632]: Login
user=taylor host=localhost [127.0.0.1] nmsgs=1/1"
popbsmtpd: Relaying ENABLED (extended) for user taylor at 24.xx.xx.121
popbsmtpd: Expiry tests: Current time 2002/12/13 02:03:19 (1039762999),
Cutoff time 2002/12/13 00:03:19 (1039755799)
^--- note that the cutoff time is EARLIER than the current time?!?
previous entries, with a negative auth_duration value (-120):
popbsmtpd: Waiting for event; timeout in 3600 seconds
popbsmtpd: INPUT DATA: "Dec 13 01:55:34 puzi spop3[27558]: Login
user=taylor host=localhost [127.0.0.1] nmsgs=1/1"
popbsmtpd: Relaying ENABLED (started) for user taylor at 24.xx.xx.121
popbsmtpd: Expiry tests: Current time 2002/12/13 01:55:34 (1039762534),
Cutoff time 2002/12/13 03:55:34 (1039769734)
popbsmtpd: Relaying DISABLED for 24.xx.xx.121
^--- with a negative duration, the cutoff time is later than the
current time, but relaying is immediately disabled (the opposite of
what i was first seeing happen).
am I crazy? or just misunderstanding the auth_duration value and its
usage?
thanks a ton for any clarity you can provide! (and thanks for a superb
solution to an otherwise troublesome secure default configuration :-)
--
L. Taylor Banks, CISSP
Chief Security Architect,
Director, Educational Services
Coral Reef Techknowledge
Office 954.359.3598 x109
Mobile 404.317.8649
Fax 877.383.5339
PGP-Key-ID: 0x822203B4
PGP-Key-Fingerprint: 8FDD 15B2 AA81 01D4 FCEF 554D 05A4 DFA1 8222 03B4
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 on 2005-11-05 00:15:05 PST
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