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| MailAdmin 1.5.1 | ||
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Introduction
The Mail Administration Utility (mailadmin) was created to provide the owner or system administrator easy control over Email Accounts. The interface has evolved into an easy to use simple to understand collection of features, some of the features of mailadmin are:
Administrator
- Adding/Deleting Email accounts.
- Setting Account Quotas.
- Obtaining Administrative Access Over Older Accounts.
- Changing An Accounts Password.
- Interfaces with the Cyrus IMAP/POP3 server.
- Transaction Log system, allowing you to track changes or to help debug issues.
- Account Tracking System, allowing to track changes as well as debug issues with accounts.
Standard User:
Changing The Accounts Password.
As these scripts evolve so will the features that are offered within the interfaces. Many enchancements are planned, and several users have requested more control over their accounts. I will be devoting much of my time towards this goal, beginning with adding these online help pages to explain the use of many of the features for those who still need a little guidance with Email Account Administration.
Changing Your Password
When you have a need to change your password the mailadmin utility offers a simple interface to allow you to easily change it when needed. The Change Your Password link provides an entry form for you to accomplish this.
There are three entry fields that need to be filled in:
- Current Password
This field requires you to enter the password you used to log into the mailadmin utility. You can not change your password without knowing the original password, but if you've made it this far then it is not an issue.
- New Password
This field is where you can enter your new password, this can be a combination of numbers and letters, as well as several punctuation marks ($, %, #, @, !, &, *). Keep in mind that the more alternating character types (numbers, letters, or punctuation marks), the harder it will be to guess.
- Verify Password
This field requires you to enter the password that you entered into the New Password field above, if they do not match you will be required to enter it in again.
Please note that once you have successfully filled in the above requirements you will be logged off the mailadmin utility. This is so that if you have other tasks that you need to do in the mailadmin utility, it can use the new settings before furthur modifications are made to your account.
Adding New Email Acccounts
The primary purpose of the mailadmin utility was to provide a quick and easy way for clients to add new email accounts to domains they own or administrate. With that in mind, adding new accounts is fairly straight forward and simple to do using the Add User Mail Account link.
There are three entry fields that are required, and one that is preset but can be changed:
- Account Name
This field allows you to enter a username that will be used by a user to send and receive email. The full email address will contain this username and append @domain.name to it. This is what will be used to by others to send email to the user.
- New Password
This field is where you can enter your new password, this can be a combination of numbers and letters, as well as several punctuation marks ($, %, #, @, !, &, *). Keep in mind that the more alternating character types (numbers, letters, or punctuation marks), the harder it will be to guess.
- Verify Password
This field requires you to enter the password that you entered into the New Password field above, if they do not match you will be required to enter it in again.
- Quota
This field allows you to limit the amount of storage used by the users email account. You do not need to set this, it has a default value. If you do choose to set a quota you can enter in a number that will represent the number of Mega-Bytes the account will use. i.e. 5 will set a quota of 5 MBytes.
Manipulation Of Current User Accounts
Being able to change the status of an account is only useful if you know what that account is, for this reason I have provided the ability to List Current Users. There are several options that are available from this page to help modify an account.
There are three entry fields that are required, and one that is preset but can be changed:
- Delete
When an email account is no longer needed, leaving it lying around can get combersum if there are alot of them. For this being able to remove the account can be a very useful option. To remove an account, click on the delete link and all email and sub-folders that existed will be removed.
- Set Quota
If you feel that the amount of disk space that is available might not be enough for everyone to have unlimited usage of that space, then you can set a quota by clicking on this "Set Quota" link. You will be required to enter in a valid number, that represents the number of Mega-Bytes that you want to assign to the account. For example, if you want to limit an account to 5 MBytes, then enter a 5 in the text box, the mailadmin utility takes care of figuring out the actual storage amount.
- Remove Quota
Over time you may have added sufficient space to allow everyone free rein on the storage space that they have "previously" had restrictions on. Clicking the "Remove Quota" link will allow them unlimited quota space, disabling quota checks for they account that has been modified.
- Change Password
Did a user forget their password? Well an administrative utility would be useless with out the ability to change a password when it is required. Clicking on the "Change Password" link will bring up a view of two text boxes, this is where you enter in a valid password as well as verify it. If the passwords to not match, the change will not take place.
- View
A user account has many different aspects to it, and as such someone might want to see what the status of an account is currently showing. The "View" option will allow you to prune through several areas of an email account without breaching their right to privacy. More information will be added to these pages as these scripts mature.
- Gain Ownsership
For those accounts that were created before the mailadmin utility was in place, there might be a few accounts that just don't seem to respond to any changes. A good test is if you are unable to set a quota on an account, then the "Administrative" account does not have access to make those changes. By clicking on the "Gain Ownership" link, access if granted to the administrative account, allowing you to modify the account as needed.
