Temporarily assign a shell to a user

I run a webserver with several mailusers. These users do not require a
shell. Now I want to fetch external mails with fetchmal for some of
these users but fetchmail doesn't work without a shell, of course.

So is there a way to assign a user a valid shell for a short period of time?

Thx,

Kai

On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:33:34 +0200, Kai Lippok mumbled something like
this:

> I run a webserver with several mailusers. These users do not require a
> shell. Now I want to fetch external mails with fetchmal for some of these
> users but fetchmail doesn't work without a shell, of course.
>
> So is there a way to assign a user a valid shell for a short period of
> time?
>
> Thx,
>
> Kai

Why not just set up a cron job to pull the mail with fetchmail. If you, as
root, run 'crontab -u username -e', it seems to work for users without a
shell(assumes they have a home directory).

Do your users have a home directory? If so, store the .fetchmailrc files
there. If not, you will have to store them somewhere else. Create a
directory in /etc perhaps...

So for a user called joe, a line similar to(should all be one line, but
may wrap here):

*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/fetchmail -v -f /joe/.fetchmailrc -L
/var/log/fetchmail.log

Depending on your mail server and its authentication requirements, you may
also need the:

--auth password

option.

Alternatively, you could use the global crontab in /etc/crontab. This will
require the username field though. As in:


*/10 * * * * joe /usr/bin/fetchmail -v -f /joe/.fetchmailrc -L
/var/log/fetchmail.log

Add similar lines for all the users you want to pull mail for.

Both the above lines should pull joe's mail every 10 minutes.

--
Rinso
/\
/ \
/wizz\
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kai Lippok <REMOVETHIS_public@kl-mail.de> writes:

>I run a webserver with several mailusers. These users do not require a
>shell. Now I want to fetch external mails with fetchmal for some of
>these users but fetchmail doesn't work without a shell, of course.

>So is there a way to assign a user a valid shell for a short period of time?

>Thx,

> Kai

Could use pam to do this I suspect. Just write a pam lib function to change
the shell on logon. On logoff it might be more difficult, since the system
could crash and pam is not run on logoff I do not believe.

Rincewind schrieb:
> On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:33:34 +0200, Kai Lippok mumbled something like
> this:
>
>
>>I run a webserver with several mailusers. These users do not require a
>>shell. Now I want to fetch external mails with fetchmal for some of these
>>users but fetchmail doesn't work without a shell, of course.
>>
>>So is there a way to assign a user a valid shell for a short period of
>>time?
>>
>>Thx,
>>
>> Kai
>
>
> Why not just set up a cron job to pull the mail with fetchmail. If you, as
> root, run 'crontab -u username -e', it seems to work for users without a
> shell(assumes they have a home directory).
>
> Do your users have a home directory? If so, store the .fetchmailrc files
> there. If not, you will have to store them somewhere else. Create a
> directory in /etc perhaps...
>
> So for a user called joe, a line similar to(should all be one line, but
> may wrap here):
>
> */10 * * * * /usr/bin/fetchmail -v -f /joe/.fetchmailrc -L
> /var/log/fetchmail.log
>
> Depending on your mail server and its authentication requirements, you may
> also need the:
>
> --auth password
>
> option.
>
> Alternatively, you could use the global crontab in /etc/crontab. This will
> require the username field though. As in:
>
>
> */10 * * * * joe /usr/bin/fetchmail -v -f /joe/.fetchmailrc -L
> /var/log/fetchmail.log
>
> Add similar lines for all the users you want to pull mail for.
>
> Both the above lines should pull joe's mail every 10 minutes.
>

Thats what I was looking for. I'll try it tommorow.

Thx!