Dovecot PAM – How to Make Dovecot Not Ask Passwords from Localhost

dovecotpam

I have set up dovecot server and I'm currently using offline imap to sync my gmail to the dovecot imap running on the localhost.

Currently I'm using plain text authentication, but this results in every single mail client to ask & remember my user name password just to access mail from localhost.

Is there a way to set up dovecot such that it will not ask me for authentication when I'm trying to log in to it from gnus from localhost for example? Or make it ask pam/gnomekeyring/anything to not ask me?

ps. there are no plans to allow accessing dovecot server not from localhost. Not even from local network.

Best Answer

Three options come to my mind:

  • First, if you are on the same machine, you could just use the underlying mail store directly, without going thru IMAP. Depending on the store and client used, this may result in some troubles reflecting changes back to IMAP, though.

  • Second, use Dovecot's mechanism for pre-authenticated sessions, together with an inetd or ucspi-tcp's tcpserver if you need to listen on a TCP port for you client of choice.

  • Finally, you could setup Kerberos ticket authentication and use that with Dovecot via GSSAPI. But that's probably overkill for your scenario.

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