Mailbox Authentication Plugin for Joomla!

This is a Joomla! plugin to authenticate users against a mail server via IMAP, NNTP, or POP3. It forwards authentication credentials provided by the user to a mail server, then relays the authentication decision of the mail server back to Joomla!.

In simpler terms, it lets users log in to Joomla! with the same username and password that they use for email, without the need to copy and synchronize the accounts manually.

Supported Features

• Fully localizable
• Set user email account based on configurable mail domain.
• Authenticate to mail server using full email address.
• Configable mail host address and port.
• Optionally require secure (non-plaintext) authentication.
• Support for TLS (optional or required) and SSL.
• Optional validation of SSL certificate from mail server.
• Supports the Joomla! Update System.

Currently Unsupported Features

• Does not integrate email/webmail into Joomla! or provide Single Sign-On (SSO) between email/webmail and Joomla! Meaning users will still need to login to both Joomla! and email/webmail separately.
• Authentication against multiple mail servers. Currently this plugin only supports authentication against a single mail server (although the address to which it connects may be load-balanced to multiple servers transparently).

Plugin Requirements

• Joomla! 3.0 or later. (Confirmed working on Joomla! 4.0-alpha3.) There are previous versions of this plugin available for Joomla! 2.5 and for Joomla! 1.5.
• PHP IMAP Extension.

Troubleshooting

Joomla! Logs

To get debugging information from the Joomla! logs:

1. Enable Log Almost Everything from the "Logging" tab of the "System - Debug" plugin in the Extensions Plugin Manager?
2. Attempt to log in.
3. Open administrator/logs/everything.php from the Joomla! directory on your server in a text editor and search for authentication_mailbox near the end of the log file. The log messages should include the arguments to imap_open (excluding passwords) and the resulting messages from imap_errors.
   • If administrator/logs/everything.php does not exist, check that the directory permissions allow the PHP process to write to that directory.
   • If authentication_mailbox does not appear in administrator/logs/everything.php, check that "Authentication - Mailbox" is enabled in the Extensions Plugin Manager.

imap_open

If imap_open can not open the user's mailbox, it may be simpler to debug by calling imap_open from a test script such as the following:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain');

error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

$mailbox = imap_open(
    '{imap.example.com/service=imap/tls/validate-cert}',
    'myusername',
    'mypassword',
    0,
    1);
print 'imap_open: ' . ($mailbox ? "Succeeded.\n" : "Failed.\n");

print 'imap_errors: ';
var_dump(imap_errors());

if ($mailbox) {
    imap_close($mailbox);
}

1. Save the above code into a file (e.g. test.php).

2. Adjust the imap_open parameters as necessary:

   1. Replace imap.example.com with a valid server (and replace /service=imap with /sevice=pop3 or /service=nntp as necessary).
   2. Replace myusername and mypassword with the username and password with a valid user and adjust any other parameters as desired.
   3. Add or remove flags such as OP_SECURE from the flags parameter.

3. Upload the file to a web server.

4. Visit the URL for the uploaded file in a web browser.

5. Repeat steps 2-4 until the page contains:

   imap_open: Succeeded. imap_errors: bool(false)

6. Adjust the plugin configuration to match the functional parameters.

Installation instructions are available in INSTALL.md. Major changes are listed in ChangeLog.txt. Complete license text is available in COPYING.txt.