How can I create a new user account with Cyrus IMAP?

Question

I'm trying to setup postfix with imap on a vserver. Now, I'm trying to create the first user/mailbox. The vserver runs Debian. I tried to login to the Cyrus administration console with cyradm, but to no avail. Search results on the internet advise me to use the cyrus account. The following steps are performed:

passwd cyrus

Let's pretend the password will be set to pass1234. ;-) Then - logged in as root - run:

cyradm -u cyrus localhost

Then enter the password 'pass1234', this yields:

Login failed: authentication failure at /usr/lib/perl5/Cyrus/IMAP/Admin.pm line 119
cyradm: cannot authenticate to server as cyrus

The same happens if I do a 'su - cyrus' before, i.e. not running as root.

All I want to accomplish now is to get into that console so that I can create a mailbox. Are there any other places (config files) or tools that I can use to manage Cyrus specific passwords?

Thanks for any hints,

Andre

Answer 1

You must authenticate as an admin user as defined in the "admins" or "imap_admins" options in /etc/imapd.conf . You should pay attention to the "sasl_mech_list" option as well and be explicit in the SASL authentication mechanism option to cyradm to avoid problems. E.g. if you specified PLAIN in "sasl_mech_list" you should specify it in the command line:

cyradm --auth PLAIN --user cyrus localhost

I prefer to specify an autocreatequota in imapd.conf to allow the creation of the mailbox through IMAP; it's a lot easier to script tha using cyradm during account creation and verification, and it could even be done manually if necessary.

Hope this helps.