Login processes
===============

The main purpose of login processes is to handle the IMAP and POP3 connections
before the user has logged in. The login processes don't need to be able to do
anything else than let the user log in, so they can run in highly restricted
environment. By default they are run as a non-privileged "dovecot" user
chrooted into a non-writable directory containing only authentication UNIX
sockets.

Login processes also handle proxying the SSL and TLS connections even after the
user has logged in. This way all the SSL code runs in the same restricted
environment, which means that a security hole in the SSL library gives the
attacker access only to the restricted chroot, rather than possibly all the
users' mails.

The default login settings should be good enough for small sites. There are two
ways to run the login processes: the high-security mode and the
high-performance mode. Both are discussed separately below.

Login process creation
----------------------

'login_process_count' and 'login_max_processes_count' setting control how new
login processes are created.'login_process_count' specifies the number of login
processes that are tried to be kept listening for new connections. However when
a lot of connections arrive at the same time this number will increase
automatically as described below.

To prevent fork-bombing Dovecot's login process creation works in a similiar
way to Apache: Initially set "wanted listening process count" to same as
'login_process_count' and start the processes. Then check every second if we
need to start up new processes to keep the listening process count the same as
the wanted count. If all the listening processes have been used, double the
wanted count. If we haven't used all of them, decrease the wanted count by one
(unless it goes below 'login_process_count'), but don't destroy already created
processes.'login_max_processes_count' specifies the maximum number of login
processes there can exist at a time (listening, non-listening and
SSL/TLS-proxying processes combined).

High-security mode
------------------

Setting 'login_process_per_connection=yes' enables the high-security mode. This
is the default. It works by using a new imap-login or pop3-login process for
each incoming connection. Since the processes run in a highly restricted
chroot, running each connection in a separate process means that in case there
is a security hole in Dovecot's pre-authentication code or in the SSL library,
the attacker can't see other users' connections and can't really do anything
destructive.

Since one login process can handle only one connection,
'login_max_processes_count' limits the number of users that can be logging in
at the same time. Currently SSL/TLS proxying processes are also counted here,
so if you're using SSL/TLS you'll need to make sure this count is higher than
the maximum number of users that can be logged in simultaneously.

If the maximum login process count is reached, the oldest process in logging-in
state (ie. non-proxying) is destroyed.

'login_max_connections' setting is completely ignored in this mode.

'login_process_size' should be fine at its default 32MB value.

High-performance mode
---------------------

Setting 'login_process_per_connection=no' enables the high-performance mode. It
works by using a number of long running login processes, each handling a number
of connections. This loses much of the security benefits of the login process
design, because in case of a security hole the attacker is now able to see
other users logging in and steal their passwords.

Login process creation rules apply just the same for this mode, but a process
is counted as "non-listening" only when it's handling 'login_max_connections'
connections already. So a new login process is created only when one of the
existing ones has used up all its connections and gone into non-listening
state. The maximum number of users logging in at the same time (+ SSL/TLS
proxying connections) is 'login_max_connections' * 'login_max_processes_count'.

You should make sure that the process has at least 16 + 'login_max_connections'
* 2 available file descriptors.

If you're using SSL/TLS you might want to increase the 'login_process_size'.
With the default 32MB Dovecot itself should be able to handle a few thousand
connections, but SSL libraries might require more.

(This file was created from the wiki on 2007-06-15 04:42)
