.. _sasl-index:

==========
Cyrus SASL
==========

Welcome to Cyrus SASL.

What is Cyrus SASL?
===================
Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL_) is a specification that describes how authentication mechanisms can be plugged into an application protocol on the wire. Cyrus SASL is an implementation of SASL that makes it easy for application developers to integrate authentication mechanisms into their application in a generic way.

The latest stable version of Cyrus SASL is |sasl_current_stable_version|.

:ref:`Cyrus IMAP <cyrusimap:imap-index>` uses Cyrus SASL to provide authentication support to the mail server, however it is just one project using Cyrus SASL.

Features
--------
Cyrus SASL provides a number of authentication plugins out of the box.

    Berkeley DB, GDBM, or NDBM (sasldb), PAM, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, LDAP, Active Directory(LDAP), DCE, Kerberos 4 and 5, proxied IMAP auth, getpwent, shadow, SIA, Courier Authdaemon, httpform, APOP and SASL mechanisms: ANONYMOUS, CRAM-MD5, DIGEST-MD5, EXTERNAL, GSSAPI, LOGIN, NTLM, OTP, PASSDSS, PLAIN, SR

.. _SASL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Authentication_and_Security_Layer

This document is an introduction to **Cyrus SASL**. It is not intended to be an exhaustive reference for the SASL Application Programming Interface (API), which is detailed in the SASL manual pages, and the libsasl.h header file.


Known Bugs
----------

.. todo:
    Is this still true?

``libtool`` doesn't always link libraries together.  In our environment,
we only have static Krb5 libraries; the GSSAPI plugin should link
these libraries in on platforms that support it (Solaris and Linux
among them) but it does not.  It also doesn't always get the runpath
of libraries correct.

Note for Packagers
------------------

People considering doing binary distributions that include saslauthd
should be aware that the code is covered by several slightly different
(but compatible) licenses, due to how it was contributed.  Details can
be found within the source code.


.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
    :caption: Overview

    download
    sasl/quickstart
    sasl/installation
    Contact Us <contribute>

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
    :caption: Configuration

    sasl/concepts
    sasl/components
    sasl/options
    sasl/sysadmin
    sasl/advanced
    sasl/upgrading
    sasl/appconvert

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
    :caption: Developers

    sasl/developer/programming
    sasl/developer/plugprog
    sasl/developer/testing

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
    :caption: Reference

    sasl/auxiliary_properties
    sasl/authentication_mechanisms
    sasl/pwcheck
    sasl/faq
    sasl/resources

.. toctree::
    :caption: IMAP

    Cyrus IMAP <http://www.cyrusimap.org>