Password Databases
==================

Dovecot authenticates users from a password database. It needs to contain only
usernames and their passwords. The passdb may also return special<extra fields>
[PasswordDatabase.ExtraFields.txt].

Dovecot supports defining multiple password databases, so that if the password
doesn't match in the first database, it checks the next one. This can be useful
if you want to easily support having both virtual users and also local system
users in '/etc/passwd'.

Currently supported password databases (note that some of them can also be used
as user databases):

 * <PAM> [PasswordDatabase.PAM.txt]: Pluggable Authentication Modules
 * <Passwd> [AuthDatabase.Passwd.txt]: '/etc/passwd', NSS or similiar (using
   'getpwnam()' function)
 * <Shadow> [PasswordDatabase.Shadow.txt]: '/etc/shadow' or similiar (using
   'getspnam()' function)
 * <Passwd-file> [AuthDatabase.PasswdFile.txt]: '/etc/passwd'-like file in
   specified location
 * <LDAP> [AuthDatabase.LDAP.txt]: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
 * <SQL> [AuthDatabase.SQL.txt]: SQL database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite)
 * <BSDAuth> [PasswordDatabase.BSDAuth.txt]: BSD authentication
 * <VPopMail> [AuthDatabase.VPopMail.txt]: External software used to handle
   virtual domains
 * <checkpassword> [PasswordDatabase.CheckPassword.txt]: External checkpassword
   program which is run

(This file was created from the wiki on 2007-04-13 14:32)
