teapop - a POP3 server daemon

teapop [-dDhinNsSuv] [-e age] [-l minutes] [-p hostname] [-t seconds]

Teapop is a pop3 mail program that allows remote clients to access mail.

Teapop's main goal is to be as flexible as possible, but yet be secure and fast. The way virtual domains can be handled is somewhat unique for POP3-servers. You no longer have to choose one way to handle all your domains, rather you can configure how each domain will be handled separately.

-d Delete messages the user has read with the RETR command.

-D Delete messages the user has read with either the RETR or the TOP command. Only messages that have been fully downloaded with the TOP command will be deleted.

-h Syntax help.

-n Don't do any kind of DNS-lookups. Teapop normally try to verify the hostname from where the client is coming. This is however not wanted in all environments and the saved CPU-cycle is preferred.

-N Don't resolve hostnames in teapop.passwd. If you use this switch you must specify the IP-address, but save CPU-cycles when you run Teapop instead.

-i Ignore the first message if it's UW IMAP's control message.

-s Starts Teapop in the background and makes it listen to port 110. Mostly known as standalone mode.

-S Compability mode for running over SSL tunnel. Will force Teapop to identify as TeapopSSL to clients and log messages to syslog as teapop_ssl.

-u Makes Teapop look for X-UIDL: headers in the mail and if found use it for the UIDL reported to the client.

NOTE: This is not for the faint hearted. If you want to use this to save CPU-cycles, make sure you set your MTA to remove X-UIDL: headers on all incoming mail and then add a unique X-UIDL: header. If you don't know what all this mean, this option is NOT for you.

-v Show version.

-e age

This will force messages older than age to be removed, after a successful exit. Age can be a mixtures of the prefix units d(ays), w(eeks), m(onths) and y(ears). The value should always be before the prefix and don't use any space between values. For instance, the value 2w1m would delete all messages older then one month and two weeks, or 44 days.

NOTE: A message which is older then the expire age will be availble during the session, so no messages will be lost for the end user.

-l minutes

If a dotlock file exists that is older then the specified amount of minutes, it will be considered stale and removed. No attempt to try to find if the process that created the file is still running will be done. Be sure to specify an amount of minutes large enough to avoid valid dotlock files to be removed.

-p hostname

Directly after a user successfully authenticates, contact a DRAC server and report the users IP address. This will be done directly after a successful authentication and before opening the mailbox, so the IP can be reported even if the mailbox would be locked.

Unless the flag --with-drac has been specified at configure time, this switch will be silently ignored.

For more information about Dynamic Relay Authorization Control see:

http://mail.cc.umanitoba.ca/drac/index.html

-t seconds

Changes the default timeout from 900 seconds to the number of seconds specified. This does only affect the time waiting for a command to be sent, and does not interfere with long downloads for instance. RFC1939 explicity states that this MUST be set to a value of 600 (10 mins) or higher.

/etc/teapop/teapop.passwd holds information on where teapop can find the password for different users/domains

Much time has been put into trying to make teapop the most flexible POP3-server available.

Main Author(s):

	Ibrahim 'Teaspoon' Khalifa
	Magnus '__ms' Stahre

Some documentation by:

	Kitty 'Meow-Meow' Morgan

inetd(8), syslogd(8), RFC1939

When running with the dotlock-method of locking a users mailbox, teapop will drop root privs before creating the lockfile. Therefore the user must have write access to the directory the user's mailbox is in. If this isn't feasable, use flock()-method instead.

Neither mbox or POP3 handles multiple concurrent sessions well, a worst case scenario could actually involve corrupt mailboxes. Teapop does its' utmost to lock the file from other processes to avoid any problems, but to ensure that no unwanted problems occurs, please make sure you use the same locking method in both teapop and your MTA (sendmail/qmail/postfix/etc).

Teapop drops root privs after a valid user/pass or apop command