[horde] Horde 4 misc problems

[Michael Rubinsky]

Quoting Louis-Philippe Allard <lp.allard.1 at gmail.com>:

> Ill be honest with you, I am confused with the backend.php file, and
> the way Horde authenticate users...
>
> I dont have a authentication server or process running on my horde
> machine.  Should I implement one?  Right now, I was thinking to use my
> gmail account as the authentication engine.  So when I am presented
> with the first Horde login page, which engine is used to authenticate?
>  Then, once logged in , why do we need a second auth engine?
>
> Thanks for helping!

First, some assumptions: You said you are using your gmail account to  
authenticate. I will assume that this means you have selected "IMAP"  
authentication when configuring Horde, and not "Let a application  
handle authentication".

When you login to Horde in your case, you are authenticated *only* to  
Horde. The fact that you told horde to use an IMAP server to validate  
a username/password is irrelevant. Horde basically attempts to login  
to the IMAP server, sees that it succeeds, then marks you as  
authenticated.  Now, you attempt to use IMP, it needs to know where  
your email is stored i.e., it needs the details of your IMAP server.  
IMP has no idea that Horde is using an IMAP server, let alone the  
*same* IMAP server, for authentication. This is why you need to  
populate the backends.php file with the connection details. Ok. Now,  
horde knows where your mail is, but it still doesn't know to use the  
same credentials that you used to login to Horde to login to your IMAP  
server. For that, you need to set the 'hordeauth' parameter in  
backends.php - like it explains in the file header.

Of course, you can make this process easier by telling Horde to "Let  
an Applciation Handle Authentication" and tell it to use "IMP". Horde  
then delegates authentication to IMP, which then authenticates against  
the server specified in backends.php.


--mike

The Horde Project (www.horde.org)
mrubinsk at horde.org