Cannot authenticate via SMTP for mail-users with mailbox OFF and forwarding ON

[quark]

I have mail-addresses with mailbox turned OFF and Forwarding switched ON.
The user can receive emails but can't use SMTP to send email. I expect that users without mailboxes can send messages, like in Plesk 9.5.

Error: No such user '[email protected]' in mail authorization database

CentOS 6.4 + Plesk 11.0.9 Update #45

 

[dtbaker]

I'm having this issue as well.

The account doesn't even show in the /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/mail_auth_view output with mailbox OFF.

Does anybody know a way to allow SMTP authentication for email accounts that do not have mailboxes?

I'm pretty sure this worked before I migrated servers to a fresh Panel 11 install.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[JimMerry]

Looks like no

I was wondering the same thing, though I haven't actually tried it on my pre: 11 plesk server yet...

I'm having this issue as well.

The account doesn't even show in the /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/mail_auth_view output with mailbox OFF.

Does anybody know a way to allow SMTP authentication for email accounts that do not have mailboxes?

I'm pretty sure this worked before I migrated servers to a fresh Panel 11 install.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Linulex]

The user can receive emails but can't use SMTP to send email. I expect that users without mailboxes can send messages, like in Plesk 9.5.

Error: No such user '[email protected]' in mail authorization database

CentOS 6.4 + Plesk 11.0.9 Update #45

This is perfect normal. If it was possible to send mail without having a login in your plesk 9.5 then the 9.5 setup is very, very wrong.

A mailserver that allows you to send mail without authentication is an open relay and the wet dream of every spammer.

When you create a mailbox, the login and password combination is entered in the authorization database and then used to check if an smtp user that want to use your mailserver to sent mail with, is allowed to do that. It is the only thing stopping spammers from using your mailserver.

no mailbox = no login/password = no means to authenticate a valid user.

regards
Jan

 

[JimMerry]

Yes but...

Isn't it more a matter of 'why can't you have a username and password account without storing emails relating to it?'.

In that configuration you could have mails forwarded from that account to another for reading AND be able to login with the requisite username and password to send via smtp without storing emails. You'd just set up details for the email address in question then turn off the mailbox. Surely then the login details should remain as that user and their password for login are still stored...

Is there an answer to the conundrum?

Cheers for replying to the thread all the same

Jim

This is perfect normal. If it was possible to send mail without having a login in your plesk 9.5 then the 9.5 setup is very, very wrong.

A mailserver that allows you to send mail without authentication is an open relay and the wet dream of every spammer.

When you create a mailbox, the login and password combination is entered in the authorization database and then used to check if an smtp user that want to use your mailserver to sent mail with, is allowed to do that. It is the only thing stopping spammers from using your mailserver.

no mailbox = no login/password = no means to authenticate a valid user.

regards
Jan

 

[Faris Raouf]

Is there an answer to the conundrum?

Jim

You could give the mailbox 0kb of storage space, but since it is forwarding then anyone sending a message to that address will receive a bounce as well as having the mail forwarded.

The solution is pretty simple - just create a different mailbox with 0Kb storage and ask the user to use the username/password for that for authentication. Alternatively, if the user has a static IP, you can add them to the email whitelist which will allow them to send without authentication.

 

[JimMerry]

Good ideas

Thanks for the suggestions.

I could adopt the former approach!

Jim

You could give the mailbox 0kb of storage space, but since it is forwarding then anyone sending a message to that address will receive a bounce as well as having the mail forwarded.

The solution is pretty simple - just create a different mailbox with 0Kb storage and ask the user to use the username/password for that for authentication. Alternatively, if the user has a static IP, you can add them to the email whitelist which will allow them to send without authentication.

 

[kapale]

Hi,
I have the same problem and didn't understand exactly how Faris solution would work.
Is this maybe solved with Plesk12?
(I don't want an open relay, just smtp AUTH without a mailbox)

I've a customer which is forwarding all his mails from his domain "[email protected]" to his gmail account, but want to sent e-mails over "[email protected]".
I don't get how he can send emails with "[email protected]". It would be nice if you could make an example... maybe I'm today a little on the slow side...

Thank you,
Alex

You could give the mailbox 0kb of storage space, but since it is forwarding then anyone sending a message to that address will receive a bounce as well as having the mail forwarded.

The solution is pretty simple - just create a different mailbox with 0Kb storage and ask the user to use the username/password for that for authentication.

 

[Digin]

This is stil a problem in Plesk 12. A workaround is to create an extra emailaccount (e.g. [email protected]) with a mailbox of 0 kB. Then use this email account in Gmail for your SMTP authentication.

 

[Joe_Pruett]

hopefully someone is still watching this thread. it sounds like plesk 12 doesn't have a good way to allow for sending email if you have incoming email disabled for a domain? for the moment i have just tweaked postfix to allow relaying for localhost, but i don't know if that will survive updates.

is this something that parallels is working on?

 

[kongo09]

In Plesk 12.5 this still seems to be a problem. Creating a special SMTP account with mailbox size 0 is only a crude workaround highlighting only another problem: anyone with access to this mailbox can send with any arbitrary email address. I would have expected that the sender email address is then [email protected] but that doesn't even show in the headers.

 

[Pandur2000]

This is bugging me as well for ages.
I want to be able to set up a mail account (that has to have a password by default @plesk) that may send mails but has no physical mailbox (just forward to another address).

 

[Sergio Manzi]

I'm transitioning all my domains from cPanel to Plesk and this is bugging me too: a real pain in the neck.

With cPanel you can do that easily by creating an email account (so that it can do SMTP authentication) and a "User filter" performing the forwarding of incoming messages and then discarding them. All within cPanel.

In Plesk I discovered that you can do almost the same, but you have to fiddle in two places:

• create a regular email User with the mailbox and the forwarding you want
  
• in RoundCube, login as that user and create an incoming filter with "Filter Rules" set to "all masseges" and "Filter Actions" set to "Discard message".

I haven't tried with Horde, but I suppose something similar may be feasible.

I hope this can help, at least until cPanel will implement a more elegant way of doing the same...

 

[Janko]

I also need a way to have no-mailbox accounts that can authenticate with that same account. Right now I have one account that everybody is using to send mail, but that is not a very good solution. If I want to exclude someone from that list, I'll have to change the password, and then change passwords for all users on their gmail accounts.

The other solution is to make a double account for every user, one for receiving mail, and one for sending mail. It seems I'll have to do that, but I don't like it.

 

[Sergio Manzi]

@Janko, I understand your frustration and I too would like to see a more elegant solution offered by Plesk, but, as you pointed out, using a single SMTP account for all users seems to be a "Very Bad Idea (tm)".

I don't understand why you should need to make double accounts as the alternative: what I described in my post above does work flawlessly with a single account per user, only problem being the extra configuration steps you have to perform in RoundCube. As a benefit each user would be able to modify his/her password using RoundCube if needs arise.

 

[pierino84]

Hello,
I ventured to the same issue while configuring mail forwarding without the mailbox activated.
I found the same advice from @Sergio Manzi in a Plesk help article, here.

Please vote here to request the feature of automatic deletion of any messages when forwarding is activated, without setting up any Horde/Roundcube filter rule.

If you encounter any script TLS error while activating the filter rule in Horde (as I did, the error was "Failed to establish TLS connection"), follow this guide to disable TLS for Sieve.

 

[Bobbbb]

I posed about a similar frustration. I was able to send in Plesk 11, but after upgrading to Onyx, I am no longer able.

Question - SMTP Only Email Accounts

 

[stou]

Also i think with this way you are losing the check of outgoing mail messages per hour. The correct way should be to be able to use SMTP relay when the email address it is present, even if there is no mailbox.