Documentation / 3. Signing in

Chapter 3

Signing in

Signup, dual-auth login, single-active-scope model.

Every session starts with clicking the avatar in the top- right of any page and entering a username or email + password. The hub validates credentials via a dual auth path.

The account & login identity model

An account is defined by either an external email address, or a hub username (which IS its @ancientholdings.eu address), or both:

  • External email only — you registered with e.g. you@gmail.com. That address is your login. At Baron upgrade you pick a hub username, which is then attached to this same account.
  • Hub username only — you registered with a bare username (e.g. cucubau); your account IS cucubau@ancientholdings.eu. The mailbox name is reserved from day one and unlocked at Baron upgrade.
  • Both — an external-email account with an attached hub username. Either identifier signs in to the same account: same role, same nodes, same earnings.

At the login form you may type the bare username — the @ancientholdings.eu part is appended automatically — the full hub address, or the external email. All of them resolve to the one canonical account. Your attached identities are listed on My Profile → Login identities.

Dual authentication

  1. Mailcow IMAP first (STARTTLS on port 993). Works for Ancient / Modern / Baron whose @ancientholdings.eu mailbox is active — these accounts authenticate against the real mailbox password.
  2. Hub scrypt fallback — if IMAP returns invalid credentials, the hub looks up clients.password_hash and verifies via crypto.scrypt. This is how Operators log in: their Mailcow mailbox is reserved-but-inactive (active=0), so IMAP always rejects; the scrypt hash they set at signup is what validates.

On Mailcow unreachable(network error, not invalid-creds) the login short-circuits to HTTP 503 instead of downgrading to scrypt — a mail-server outage shouldn’t silently flip every admin to the fallback channel.

Single-active-scope

Multiple accounts can be added to the same browser session, but only ONE is in scope at a time (Google-style). Switching scope is a cookie-only flip via POST /api/mail/activate — no re-authentication. The validated email + display name land in an encrypted iron-session cookie.

Public self-signup

When an Ancient Admin has opened public registration, anyone can create an Operator-tier account at /signup. Any email works as the login. If the chosen email ends in @ancientholdings.eu, signup reserves the mailbox name on Mailcow with active=0 (inactive until a future Baron activation).

When registration is closed, /signupreturns a friendly “registration is closed” notice; Ancient Admins can still invite operators manually via /admin/admins.

Welcome line

After login, the hub greets you with the display name on your Mailcow mailbox (when set) plus your email: “Welcome George Popescu (codera@ancientholdings.eu)”. Full name is pulled from the session’s active account.