Bug 114868

There is a cross dependency between cyrus-sals and postfix. Postfix
does indeed use /etc/sysconfig/saslauthd. The problem you are running
into is multiple packages might rely on this file and its contents, in
fact any non-root installed process which needs to perform SASL
authentication. At the moment I'm not aware of any mechanism in SASL
to selectively pick the authentication method based on the client.
Therefore all clients must agree. Since sasl authentcation is part of
imap the imap package installs this file, is that any more wrong than
postfix installing it? By the same logic suggested in the bug report
the file should have been called /etc/sysconfig/imap, but that is
non-sensical because the config file belongs to saslauthd and
saslauthd wouldn't find it. What is really needed is
/etc/sysconfig/saslauthd.d with config files for each client. But like
I said, saslauthd does not support per client configuration.

So what we really have is is the question of whether ANY package that
uses saslauthd should install its config file. Maybe not, since there
is a clearly a conflict, perhaps its best if no package ever installs
this file because its shared, then make the sysadmin read the install
doc and create it themselves. My primary concern with this is how few
sysadmins will actually do that.

I suspose the right answer is to have our cyrus-sasl package install
this file, which it currently does not, this to some degree is a
duplicate of bug #113975. I've added Nalin on the CC list for this bug. 

Question: Nalin, shouldn't our cyrus-sasl RPM install and own the
salsuathd config file? 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 113975 ***

opps, meant to add Nalin to CC list.

No, the problem is most packages in /etc/sysconfig use filenames
derived from their own package name: prelink for prelink, kudzu for
kudzu, etc.
By observing this simple rule, namespace clashes are much less likely.
cyrus-sasl could use "cyrus-sasl" or "saslauthd" or whatever, no other
package would normally claim that.
If the postfix package installs a file in /etc/sysconfig, that file
should be called "postfix", regardless of what's inside. In fact, the
same file could be used for other Postfix-related settings. It's the
job of the postfix package scripts to derive whatever info they like
from that file.
If /etc/sysconfig/saslauthd belongs, from a logical perspective, to
sasl-related functions that are used by other apps, then that file
should be installed by cyrus-sasl not by postfix or whatever.

I think you may have missed the issue. Postfix is not reading this
file directly, it makes no sense for this file to be named postfix in
any sense. Rather a library that postfix links against is reading this
file, and as a matter of fact that library is cyrus-sasl. More than
one client can link against cyrus-sasl, imap is one example, would you
call this file "imap"? The issue is that any process that links
against cyrus-sasl will likely use this file. It was probably a
mistake for postfix to install it, rather relying on cyrus-sasl to
install it.

The file is called saslauthd because its owned and read by saslauthd,
the only real quesiton is who should be installing this file, I
believe the correct answer is cyrus-sasl and the name has to remain
saslauthd or it will not be found.

It still believe this is a duplicate of bug 113975.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 113975 ***

Then i agree. In fact, that was all i was asking for: sasl should
install that file, not postfix.
Thanks.

Changed to 'CLOSED' state since 'RESOLVED' has been deprecated.