Associate an Email Address with a User with Shell Privileges

From DreamHost

Current

• You cannot associate an email address with a shell account.
• You can however forward mail to a shell account.
• However, this mail will then not be accessible via webmail or IMAP/POP clients.

You can add a filter to “Forward mail to a shell account” at:

• Panel → Mail → Message Filters via “Add a filter” → “Forward mail to a shell account”

Note that forwarding to a shell account is not available at Mailbox Manager, though other filters are.

This allows you to use various shell filters, but the messages will only be delivered to your shell account, and will not be available via webmail or other IMAP (or POP) clients, because the shell and IMAP/POP are no longer linked.

See Shell-linked E-mail for further details.

Obsolete

QUESTION: HOW DO I ASSOCIATE A -USER- WITH AN EMAIL ADDRESS ?
BACKGROUND: This question arose in conjunction with work to get procmail to function in the capacity of an interface to cgi script. The function of EMAIL to SCRIPT requires procmail to be used. Procmail requires the use of an email associated with a user that has shell privileges. (why?)

Answer: Depending on what your starting place 1 of 3 methods apply as there are seem to be 3 meaningful cases:
a) with a new email address
b) with an existing email address
c) create a shell user from scratch - ( most likely option for person doing Email_to_Script setup)

New Address: then you'd simply use the "create new address" link at the top center of the mail admin page:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=mail.addresses&

Once in that screen, you'll see the check box labeled "deliver to this mailbox:". Under that, you'll see a Mailbox Login: pull down menu. If there is a specific mailbox that doesn't have an address assigned to it, then it'll be listed there. This is ONLY if the mailbox is not already assigned an address. An example of what appears is NAME<no address>USER where name and user represent values from the user tab of the DH webpanel.

An email address that does not correspond to a USER has this form: FudgeANameForTest<TestEditEmail@example.net>m######### This address was created with no corresponding USER in the user tab list of users. In lieu of a user and name the email address in brackets is assigned an m-number and what ever you choose at time of creation on the email panel control page. OBSERVATION: This is the email type quoted as the m####### not working with scripts.

If you want to assign a previously created address to a mailbox. Simply edit that address, and select a new mailbox in the Mailbox Login:pulldown. The practical upshot of this is that since only unused USER/NAME pair from the user panel will be offered as options in the drop down box so possibly at time of granting an email user greater priviledges such as shell user access would be when this sequence would be called into play.

Existing Address: If you want to change a mailboxes address, then you'll need to edit that mailbox's address, and change the name in the "Email sent to" text box. If you enter an address that already exists, it'll be wiped out. This is not central to setting up the association between an email address and a user however it provides flexibility so that all things are under your control should you have one of those unforeseen changes of mind.

Creating a shell User and email from Scratch: When you create a shell user from scratch using the user tab of the DH webpanel you will be prompted for among other things a UserName and a FullName. (For purposes of use with procmail you also want to choose shell access). When done inputting the choice for these you then click on ADD USER. This will then bring up a page where it prompts for an email address. For my purposes this yielded an email with the following association:

PerlScriptInterface<announcement@example.net>EmailAutomaton.

Where PerlScriptInterface=name and EmailAutomaton=user and announcement@example.net = the email selected when prompted. When you look at the overview of your email addresses you will see that in this case instead of an m-number, the user name selected which in this example is EmailAutomaton is in its place.

OBSERVATION:It is therefore concluded that this is the type of email address with shell privileges that will work with procmail.

SUMMARY If you are trying to associate a USER with shell access with an email address you can force whatever combination you want using the more intricate manipulations. However the most logical progression when setting up for a procmail version of Email-to-Script interface the most logical progression is to simply set up a new user as that will prompt you for everything that needs to be set up on DreamHost.