COURIERPASSD(8) Authentication COURIERPASSD(8)NAMEcourierpassd - change passwords from across the network using the
Courier authentication library
SYNOPSIScourierpassd [-hV] [-s SERVICE] [--stderr]
courierpassd-s, --service SERVICE
courierpassd--stderr
courierpassd-h, --help
courierpassd-V, --version
DESCRIPTIONcourierpassd allows users to change their passwords from remote loca‐
tions using the Courier authentication library. Usernames can be up to
64 characters long while passwords can be up to 128 characters long.
courierpassd uses the poppassd protocol for obtaining authentication
tokens from the network. courierpassd is intended to be run from a
super-server such as tcpserver or xinetd.
The service specified by the -s switch will depend on the particular
authentication modules installed. Often 'login' will be appropriate but
other possibilities include 'imap' and 'pop3'. This value defaults to
'login'. See the Courier documentation for a further explanation of
this switch.
The minimum uid that courierpassd will attempt to change a password for
can be set at compile time using the configure option --with-minuid.
courierpassd will refuse to change the password of a user whose uid is
below this value. The default value is 100. This value should never be
set to 0 as this would allow root's password to be changed from a
remote location.
A second configure option, --with-badpassdelay, can be used to set the
delay in seconds that courierpassd sleeps after an unsuccessful pass‐
word change attempt. This feature is designed to make brute force
attacks against passwords harder to perform. The default value is 3.
LOGGING
Logging is done to syslog by default or to stderr if the --stderr
switch is used. courierpassd logs all password change attempts whether
they are successful or not.
courierpassd does certain checks on command line arguments so it is
important to put --stderr first in the argument list if it is to be
used in order for these checks to be logged properly.
EXAMPLE CLIENT-SERVER CONVERSATION
All messages passed between server and client are text based allowing a
client session to be easily mimicked with telnet. Using telnet, chang‐
ing a user's password would look like this:
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
200 courierpassd 1.1.2 hello, who are you?\r\n
user <username>\r\n
200 Your password please.\r\n
pass <current password>
200 Your new password please.\r\n
newpass <new password>\r\n
200 Password changed, thank-you.\r\n
quit\r\n
200 Bye.\r\n
Connection closed by foreign host.
BUGS
If you've found a bug in courierpassd, please report it to free‐
ware@arda.homeunix.net
SEE ALSO
http://www.courier-mta.org/authlib/
http://echelon.pl/pubs/poppassd.html
AUTHORcourierpassd was written by Andrew St. Jean
Courier authentication library was written by Sam Varshavchik
poppassd was written by Pawel Krawczyk based on an ealier version writ‐
ten by John Norstad, Roy Smith and Daniel L. Leavitt
GNU/Linux 20 Jan 2005 COURIERPASSD(8)
