Andre Oppermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Are the CommonName variants stored as such in the X.500 or LDAP
> directory? Or do you put every possible combination into 'mail' and
> 'alternateMailAddress' fields in the ldap entry?

I pull CommonNames from X.500 then populate qmail-ldap's LDAP with
email equivalents.


> Probably the best way to handle such a situation is to make an account
> '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' which will catch all email to unknown users.
> It could then do a program delivery with an expanded lookup with
> extented attributes.

Ah, that seems pretty clean. If the username portion matched a
(ambiguous) firstname or lastname, it could send a bounce with
full-name info based on LDAP attribute query.  If it didn't match, it
would send a "no such user" message.

It would be more efficient, however, if it could distinguish between
no match at all, and an ambiguous match -- like on a common last name
like [EMAIL PROTECTED]  In the first case, I can send a bounce
immediately, not having to go to a catch-all account.  If I can detect
ambiguity then I can do the additional LDAP queries and generate a
helpful bounce message.   I'd hate to have to do that extra LDAP work
for every bogus probe address some spammer hits us with!


> Is such a reply generated every time when not the unique email address
> is used? Or is it delivering with all the variants if there is no
> conflict?

"Helpful" bounce is generated when a non-unique address is specified
-- e.g., using only the last name which would match multiple users.
If the username portion matches only one user -- even it it might
later become ambiguous -- it's delivered to them.  In other words, mail
to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" gets to me now because I'm the only one, but
if my brother starts working here, it will start bouncing with a
helpful list of both our real addresses.  Mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
bounces now because there are many.  (In my testing just now, mail to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" bounces with user unknown, so it looks like the
X.500 system is not trying to match on FirstName -- but is on all CN
variants plus SN.

Sorry this is so complicated :-(


> For this variant some sort of alias user should be invoked when search
> hits > 1. Then same story with program delivery and extended lookup.

Yeah, that would be great.

> Hmm... Should be not too hard to put a such a handler into qmail-ldap.
> Will have look at that tomorrow with Claudio. Would be helpful if you
> could answer the questions until then.

My current X.500 import needs to create a SN variant in the qldap
mailAlternateAddress, in addition to the CN variants -- then I think
I'll match like our existing system does.  It would be great if
qmail-ldap could distinguish between no matches and multiple matches,
and react differently: the former would bounce, the latter would do
additional work and send information in the bounce.

Many thanks.

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