I have been looking into the creation of an accountgen process for e-mail.

        I currently have a cumbersome proof of concept process that depends on the
Novell import file and a couple of mailstore lists.  It runs half on my PC
and half on muaix03.  It needs to be converted into a process that works
within the normal production infrastructure.

        I have a few concerns that I think need addressed before I try to package
this into a production account generation product.  I would like to call a
meeting to discuss this when it makes since.  Perhaps this should be a part
of an accountgen2 meeting.

        The things I am concerned about are:
1.  If this process depends on the Novell import file, is this going to
work in the new accountgen environment?

        I have heard that the import file will not be generated, rather the info
will need to come from the Banner files.  That is fine, if a perl interface
is made available to this program.


2. I am adding accounts using the sendmail bulk add process.  I don't see
any down side to doing the adds this way.  It creates an account and an
INBOX for each user.  The list of uids to be added comes by inspection of
the import file against a list of current e-mail accounts.  Anything found
in the import file that is not in the e-mail user list is considered a new
account to be added.

        Is anything else needed for IMAP?

3. When an account is marked in the import file as suspended, the Novell
action is to disable the account.  This results in a failed authentication
via LDAP.  To allow this to be reflected back to the POP and IMAP
authentications, the ID needs to be removed from the local cache on the
E-mail server.  That is the action the code takes.

4.  When an account is marked for delete, on the Novell side, all personal
data (ie UDS) space is deleted.  It is my understanding that we do not
backup e-mail.  Given this, I believe it is OK to just delete the account
and all mail that may remain on the mailbox once the UID is marked for
deletion via the import file.  An account is not marked for deletion until
long after the person is considered gone.

        Is that everyone else's understanding as well?

5.  Several other files need to be generated each day that are extracts
from the previous day's maillog file.  I need to recreate the IPaddress
file that Kent was generating.  I need to collect daily usage numbers for
the mailstore, number of messages per day, number of unique logins (POP and
IMAP) per day, bytes moved, and so on.

        My thought was to tie these two activities together with other house
keeping processes.  At this time I don't know what those are.  Before I
invest in a solution, it seems to me we should sit down and figure this out.

        Comments and issues I did not think about are solicited.

        Chris Allison