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CHECKVPW(1)              VMailMgr Tools Documentation              CHECKVPW(1)

NAME
       checkvpw - check passwords for virtual and non-virtual users

SYNOPSIS
       checkvpw subprogram [arguments...]

DESCRIPTION
       This program is a drop-in replacement for the standard checkpassword,
       written by D. J. Bernstein (djb@pobox.com).  In the absence of virtual
       hosting (determined by the use of /var/qmail/control/virtualdomainss
       and IP aliases), it behaves identically to checkpassword.  When virtual
       hosting is used, it permits logins from a unique set of users for each
       of the aliases.

       checkvpw must be run from either the tcp-env program (part of the qmail
       package) or from a suitable substitute, such as tcpserver (part of the
       ucspi-tcp package).  These packages are used to determine to which
       address a remote host is connecting.  checkvpw must also be passed the
       checkpassword-compatible authentication data on file descriptor three.
       This can be accomplished by running it from a tool such as qmail-popup.

       checkvpw accepts a command line in the following format:

               checkvpw [subprogram] [arguments...]

       If the authentication information is valid, the subprogram is run,
       otherwise checkvpw returns an error to the program that invokes it.

       If the user name contains the character "@", the host name reported by
       tcp-env is replaced by the string following the "@", and the user name
       is replaced by the string preceding the "@".  If the local host name
       reported by tcp-env matches one of those in
       /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains, checkvpw prepends the prepend string
       associated with the host name to the given user name.  Wildcards in
       virtualdomains are permitted and are handled in the same way qmail
       handles them (see qmail-send).  For example, if the line ".bar.com:bar"
       appears in the virtual hosts file, it matches "one.two.bar.com" but not
       "bar.com".

       If the user name resulting from the above step appears in the system
       password file (typically /etc/passwd), the user is treated as a local
       user and authenticated with the information from that file.  If this
       authentication succeeds, the mail directory is set to the subdirectory
       named on the command line.  If the user name does not appear in the
       system password file and is of the form "name-ext" where "name" does
       appear in the password file, the user is treated as a "virtual" user
       and authenticated with the information from a file named passwd in the
       user's home directory.  If this authentication succeeds, the mail
       directory is set to the subdirectory users/ext/ in the user's home
       directory, where "ext" is from the above step.

       checkvpw also does some rewriting on the arguments of the subprogram.
       Any argument matching the string ""maildir"" (ignoring case) is
       replaced with the full path of the mail directory, as determined by the
       steps above.

       This program may be invoked in combination with qmail-popup and
       qmail-pop3d from inetd by placing the following line in the
       /etc/inetd.conf configuration file (all one line):

               pop-3 stream tcp nowait root /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env tcp-env -R /var/qmail/bin/qmail-popup <hostname> /usr/bin/checkvpw /var/qmail/bin/qmail-pop3d Maildir/

RETURN VALUE
       0 if the user is successfully authenticated, nonzero if any error
       occurred.  Exit code 1 indicates that a bad password was given, 2
       indicates that the program was used incorrectly, and 111 indicates a
       temporary failure.

ENVIRONMENT
       checkvpw requires that "TCPLOCALHOST" be set to the host name of the
       local address of the connection.

SEE ALSO
       vdeliver(1)

AUTHOR
       Bruce Guenter <bruceg@em.ca>.

vmailmgr 0.97                     2016-02-18                       CHECKVPW(1)