Distributed James Server — usersrepository.xml

User repositories are required to store James user information and authentication data.

Consult this example to get some examples and hints.

The user data model

A user has two attributes: username and password.

A valid user should satisfy these criteria:

username and password cannot be null or empty
username should not be longer than 255 characters
username can not contain '/'
username can not contain multiple domain delimiter('@')
A username can have only a local part when virtualHosting is disabled. E.g.'myUser'
When virtualHosting is enabled, a username should have a domain part, and the domain part should be concatenated after a domain delimiter('@'). E.g. 'myuser@james.org'

A user is always considered as lower cased, so 'myUser' and 'myuser' are the same user, and can be used as well as recipient local part than as login for different protocols.

Configuration

Table 1. usersrepository.xml content
Property name	explanation
enableVirtualHosting	true or false. Add domain support for users (default: false, except for Cassandra Users Repository)
administratorId	user’s name. Allow a user to access to the impersonation command, acting on the behalf of any user.
verifyFailureDelay	Delay after a failed authentication attempt with an invalid user name or password. Duration string defaulting to seconds, e.g. `2`, `2s`, `2000ms`. Default `0s` (disabled).
algorithm	use a specific hash algorithm to compute passwords, with optional mode `plain` (default) or `salted`; e.g. `SHA-512`, `SHA-512/plain`, `SHA-512/salted`, `PBKDF2`, `PBKDF2-SHA512` (default). Note: When using `PBKDF2` or `PBKDF2-SHA512` one can specify the iteration count and the key size in bytes. You can specify it as part of the algorithm. EG: `PBKDF2-SHA512-2000-512` will use 2000 iterations with a key size of 512 bytes.
hashingMode	specify the hashing mode to use if there is none recorded in the database: `plain` (default) for newer installations or `legacy` for older ones

Configuring a LDAP

Alternatively you can authenticate your users against a LDAP server. You need to configure the properties for accessing your LDAP server in this file.

Consult this example to get some examples and hints.

Example:

<usersrepository name="LocalUsers" class="org.apache.james.user.ldap.ReadOnlyUsersLDAPRepository" ldapHost="ldap://myldapserver:389"
    principal="uid=ldapUser,ou=system" credentials="password" userBase="ou=People,o=myorg.com,ou=system" userIdAttribute="uid">
    <enableVirtualHosting>true</enableVirtualHosting>
</usersrepository>

SSL can be enabled by using ldaps scheme. trustAllCerts option can be used to trust all LDAP client certificates (optional, defaults to false).

Example:

<usersrepository name="LocalUsers" class="org.apache.james.user.ldap.ReadOnlyUsersLDAPRepository" ldapHost="ldaps://myldapserver:636"
    principal="uid=ldapUser,ou=system" credentials="password" userBase="ou=People,o=myorg.com,ou=system" userIdAttribute="uid"
    trustAllCerts="true">
    <enableVirtualHosting>true</enableVirtualHosting>
</usersrepository>

Moreover, per domain base DN can be configured:

<usersrepository name="LocalUsers" class="org.apache.james.user.ldap.ReadOnlyUsersLDAPRepository" ldapHost="ldap://myldapserver:389"
    principal="uid=ldapUser,ou=system" credentials="password" userBase="ou=People,o=myorg.com,ou=system" userIdAttribute="uid"
    <enableVirtualHosting>true</enableVirtualHosting>
    <domains>
        <domain.tld>ou=People,o=other.com,ou=system</domain.tld>
    </domains>
</usersrepository>

You can connect to multiple LDAP servers for better availability by using ldapHosts option (fallback to ldapHost is supported) to specify the list of LDAP Server URL with the comma , delimiter. We do support different schemas for LDAP servers.

Example:

<usersrepository name="LocalUsers" class="org.apache.james.user.ldap.ReadOnlyUsersLDAPRepository" ldapHosts="ldap://ldapServer1:389,ldaps://ldapServer2:636"
    principal="uid=ldapUser,ou=system" credentials="password" userBase="ou=People,o=myorg.com,ou=system" userIdAttribute="uid" trustAllCerts="true">
    <enableVirtualHosting>true</enableVirtualHosting>
</usersrepository>

When VirtualHosting is on, you can enable local part as login username by configure the resolveLocalPartAttribute. This is the LDAP attribute that allows to retrieve the local part of users. Optional, default to empty, which disables login with local part as username.

Example:

<usersrepository name="LocalUsers" class="org.apache.james.user.ldap.ReadOnlyUsersLDAPRepository" ldapHosts="ldap://ldapServer1:389,ldaps://ldapServer2:636"
    principal="uid=ldapUser,ou=system" credentials="password" userBase="ou=People,o=myorg.com,ou=system" resolveLocalPartAttribute="uid" userIdAttribute="mail" trustAllCerts="true">
    <enableVirtualHosting>true</enableVirtualHosting>
</usersrepository>

The "userListBase" configuration option is used to differentiate users that can login from those that are listed as regular users. This is useful for dis-activating users, for instance.

A different values from "userBase" can be used for setting up virtual logins, for instance in conjunction with "resolveLocalPartAttribute". This can also be used to manage disactivated users (in "userListBase" but not in "userBase").

Note that "userListBase" can not be specified on a per-domain-basis.

LDAP connection pool size tuning

Apache James offers some options for configuring the LDAP connection pool used by unboundid:

poolSize: (optional, default = 4) The maximum number of connection in the pool. Note that if the pool is exhausted, extra connections will be created on the fly as needed.
maxWaitTime: (optional, default = 1000) the number of milli seconds to wait before creating off-pool connections, using a pool connection if released in time. This effectively smooth out traffic burst, thus in some case can help not overloading the LDAP
connectionTimeout: (optional) Sets the connection timeout on the underlying to the specified integer value
readTimeout: (optional) Sets property the read timeout to the specified integer value.