Controlling access to a www4mail Server !

Okay,

Consider the following

Case A: I want to block all users and only accept requests from certain 
users

Solution: Create only the conf/.access file or set the configuration file
directive AllowedUserFile to whatever text file you like
	Once this file exists and is readable. www4mail will not
	answer any request except the sender's e-mail address is 
	listed here.

Case B: I want to accept request from all users but only block some
certain users.

Solution: Create only the conf/.blacklist file or set the configuration
file directive BlacklistedUserFile to point to a text file.

	Once this file exists, www4mail will not process any request from 
	a sender's whose e-mail address is listed here.


Notes:
Well, in the processing www4mail checks the the black list before the
accept list, however this does not mean anything as there is no
relationship between both files. Any one of them can choose to reject your
mail. But it may be said that the BlacklistedUserFile creates a
semi-private www4mail server while the AllowedUserFile creates a fully
private www4mail server.

In order to archive a fully private server it is sufficient to create only
the conf/.access file and place your e-mail address within it. Once the
conf/.access file exists www4mail becomes a private server. 

Syntax of the text files:
Each entry must appear on a single line 
Comments may appear on a line starting with the # sign
 
It is possible for you to place entries as follows
	1. Full e-mail addresses

	tobias@kabissa.org

	tobias@*


	2. E-mail domains for all users from the domain

	*@kabissa.org

	E-mail for an entire country
	^*@*.ng$

	or
	^*@*.com$

	or 
	^*@*.de$ 

	The above entry matches mails from senders with addresses ending
in .ng note that the final dollar sign is necessary, while the begining ^ 
sign is optional.

The above entries have been tested and found to work fine on a 2.4p1
server.

May be in future, it maybe necessary to allow an external
executable program to perform the authentication and return a pass or fail
result to the www4mail program.

Thanks

Clement Onime



On Tue, 23 May 2000, Tobias Eigen wrote:

> Hi Clement,
> 
> What are the rules for the .blacklist and .access files? If I include for
> example *.@.*.com in .blacklist as you suggested below, but wanted
> tobias@kabissa.com to still have access, could I simply add
> tobias@kabissa.com to the .access file?
> 
> I think I will need to take measures to block unknown addresses :-( the vast
> majority of users of www4mail in the last two days were after porno. They
> mostly also came from places like China and Russia, which was interesting,
> but have absolutely nothing to do with the African non-profit sector!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tobias
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Onime Clement [mailto:onime@ictp.trieste.it]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 2:45 PM
> To: Tobias Eigen
> Subject: RE: New version 2.4p1 - www4mail Perl sources (fwd)
> 
> 
> 
> No, I did not publise your site!
> 
> About the porn, I expect that www4mail will allow HTML pages but block
> most images! There are people out there that are really sick!
> 
> BTW, in order to limit the users that www4mail asnwers, you can do the
> following
> create the file conf/.blacklist , www4mail will never reply to any e-mail
> address that you place in this file.
> 
> You can also create a conf/.access file , in this case www4mail will never
> answer any user unless his e-mail address is listed in this file.
> 
> In this files you can place entries for entire domains such as *@yahoo.com
> or .*@.*.com (I hope this locks out all .com )
> 
> Thanks
> Clement Onime
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 23 May 2000, Tobias Eigen wrote:
> 
> > Will do this tonight. We've been getting requests for porno materials...
> > have you publicised the kabissa.org www4mail installation somewhere? I'd
> > rather keep it low-profile and targeted to the African non-profit sector.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Tobias
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Onime Clement [mailto:onime@ictp.trieste.it]
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 10:42 AM
> > To: tobias@kabissa.org
> > Subject: New version 2.4p1 - www4mail Perl sources (fwd)
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Tobias,
> > Here we have the 2.4p1 version!
> > It has some major corrections to bugs found in the 2.4 version!
> > Please kindly download the patch www4mail-patch20000522.tar.gz and install
> > it using
> >  gzip -d -c www4mail-patch20000522.tar.gz | tar -xvf- from the home
> > directory of the www4mail user.
> >
> > The location for the file is
> >
> http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~canessae/www4mail-2.4p1/www4mail-patch20000522.t
> > ar.gz
> >
> > Thanks
> > Clement
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 11:17:35 +0200
> > From: Canessa Enrique <canessae@ictp.trieste.it>
> > Subject: New version 2.4p1 - www4mail Perl sources
> >
> > Dear www4mail Administrator,
> >
> > Thank you for your interest on the Perl sources of
> > "www4mail: Web Navigation & Database Search by E-Mail (The Next
> Generation)"
> >
> > You can download the latest "www4mail-x.x.tar.gz" source file from
> >
> >          http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~canessae/www4mail-2.4p1
> >
> > (Therein you can also find the patch "www4mail-patch2000xxx.tar.gz"
> > if you need to upgrade an existing server.  In this case from the home
> > directory of www4mail issue the command
> >     gzip -d -c www4mail-patch2000xxx.tar.gz | tar -xvf-  )
> >
> > Please note that
> >
> >       - www4mail is a prototype, under development!
> >
> >       - the www4mail source is given to you for personal use or
> >         to offer a NON-PROFIT www4mail service to the Internet
> >         community with low-bandwidth access.
> >
> >       - the www4mail Perl source is given as it is.
> >
> > Yours Sincerely,
> > Clement Onime
> > Enrique Canessa
> >
> >
> >
> > Disclaimer
> > ~~~~~~~~~~
> > The Scientific Computer Section of The Abdus Salam International Centre
> > for Theoretical Physics, is the provider of the Perl source code for
> > www4mail.  It cannot be held responsible for the contents, presentation or
> > mis-presentation of Web documents retrieved from the Internet using
> > www4mail.
> >
> >
> >
> > What is www4mail?
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > www4mail is a free software that allows you to navigate and search the
> > whole Internet via electronic mail (e-mail) by using any standard
> > World-Wide Web (WWW) browser and a MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
> > Exchange) aware e-mail program.  E-mail messages get automatically passed
> > to your e-mail agent when you select (one or more) buttons that link to
> > other Web pages. UUENCODE and other options are also available.
> > Further info can be found at:
> >
> >          http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~www4mail
> >
> > (c) www4mail 1998-2000
> >
> >
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 May 2000 03:02:04 UTC