Question

Can sendmail check valid users through LDAP?

Asked by: bartsmit

We run a MailScanner (www.mailscanner.info) filter in front of our internal mail server. We want to restrict the inbound messages to valid recipient names only, and drop connections for unknown recipients. Obviously the filter does not have the users locally, so we want to get sendmail to check an LDAP database to see if the user is valid. It should then accept the message for forward, and send a 5xx error if the user is unknown ('551 go home, filthy spammer' would do).

I have checked through the sendmail docs and I can find some references to LDAP, but there doesn't seem to be a straightforward recipe to make reject/accept decisions based on this.

Bart...

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Asked On
2003-12-26 at 10:38:06ID20835002
Tags

sendmail

,

ldap

,

check

,

valid

,

user

Topic

SendMail Email Server

Participating Experts
4
Points
250
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: jleviePosted on 2003-12-26 at 22:47:06ID: 10004451

I don't know of a way to do this easily with LDAP at the sendmail level. However, it would be pretty easy to write a Perl script that:

1) Extracts the list of valid email addresses from LDAP
2) Builds a temp copy of virtusertable with the "catchall" set to reject with error message (see http://sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html)
3) Diffs the current virtusertable against the temp copy and rebuilds the map if they are different.

Running such a script from cron, say every 15 or 30 minutes, would not impose a significant load on your MailScanner system and it would accomplish your goal.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2004-01-07 at 08:22:25ID: 10063002

Yes sendmail kindly defers anything that spammers pass on...
You need custom Scheck_rcpt rules to match your LDAP directory

 

by: jeremycxPosted on 2004-01-26 at 09:54:06ID: 10202373

This is relatively pretty easy to set up. You'll most likely need to recompile sendmail with LDAP support built in. in your sendmail source directory, cd to devtools/Site and create a file called site.config.m4, in this file add the following two lines:

APPENDDEF(`confMAPDEF', `-DLDAPMAP -I/usr/local/include')
APPENDDEF(`confLIBS', `-L/usr/local/lib -lldap -llber')

(you might have to adjust the pathnames to match the locatations of your ldap libs on your server).

Once this is done, you will need to recompile and reinstall sendmail.

Now, in your sendmail.mc file, add the following lines:

FEATURE(ldap_routing,,,bounce)
LDAPROUTE_DOMAIN(`yourdomain.name')
define(`confLDAP_DEFAULT_SPEC', `-h "hostname.of.ldap.server" -b "dntosearch"')dnl

Rebuild your sendmail.cf file from the mc file and you should be off and running. Your LDAP schema should contain the following attributes:

objectClass=inetLocalMailRecipient
mailLocalAddress=user@yourdomain.name

So, when a new email comes in, sendmail will look for a user in LDAP with an objectclass of inetLocalMailRecipient and a mailLocalAddress that matches the recipient address. If this match is not made, it will bounce the message.

More info can be found here:

http://www.sendmail.org/m4/ldap_routing.html

 

by: bartsmitPosted on 2004-01-26 at 12:29:20ID: 10203760

Thanks Jeremy, I will test this and get back to you.

 

by: boozzardPosted on 2004-02-07 at 10:40:47ID: 10299101

Hi Bartsmit,

I am also trying to do this but from Linux (fedora core 1) to a windows 2003 Domain Controller, did you have any success? do you know if i have to do anything differently

Thanks

 

by: bartsmitPosted on 2004-02-19 at 06:32:57ID: 10402794

Hi Jeremy, our LDAP people are dragging their heels and it's not fair to make you wait on them. If I run into any problems I'll comment them here to ensure the PAQ value of the question.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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