I'm trying to install Dovecot onto my QNAP NAS. I apologise for this! It means I'm not working in a normal environment, and don't (necessarily) have the normal range of tools available (or the most up to date version of those tools).
It seems that 2.0.21 works (at least, as far as I've tested), but 2.1.17 and 2.2.4 won't start up their child services.
I've got the source code for all three from http://www.dovecot.org/download.html, and, for experimental purposes, I'm configuring with: ./configure --prefix=/opt
The configure script ends by reporting: Install prefix . : /opt File offsets ... : 64bit I/O polling .... : epoll I/O notifys .... : inotify SSL ............ : yes (OpenSSL) GSSAPI ......... : no passdbs ........ : static passwd passwd-file shadow checkpassword : -pam -bsdauth -sia -ldap -sql -vpopmail userdbs ........ : static prefetch passwd passwd-file checkpassword nss : -ldap -sql -vpopmail SQL drivers .... : : -pgsql -mysql -sqlite
The dovecot.conf I'm using, at the moment, is the absolute minimal to fire things up: protocols = imap listen = * ssl_cert =
dovecot -n is happy, and reports those four lines back to me.
When I start this up, I get, in /var/log/messages file: Jul 10 10:09:28 QNAP mail.info dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.0.21 starting up (core dumps disabled)
and ps shows: [admin@qnap dovecot]# ps -ef | grep dovecot admin 11478 1 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 /opt/sbin/dovecot dovecot 11479 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/anvil admin 11480 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/log admin 11482 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/config admin 11525 455 0 10:10 pts/5 00:00:00 grep dovecot
All is right with the world! Well, until I try to use dovecot properly, at which point I'll need a full configuration. But it's alright so far! :)
However, if I go through the same routine with Dovecot 2.1.17, I get the appropriate message in messages: Jul 10 10:12:45 QNAP mail.info dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.1.17 starting up (core dumps disabled)
But this time, ps shows: [admin@qnap dovecot-2.1.17]# ps -ef | grep dovecot admin 15259 1 0 10:12 ? 00:00:00 /opt/sbin/dovecot admin 15294 455 0 10:12 pts/5 00:00:00 grep dovecot
and the child services don't seem to have started. This is born out by the fact that no network connections work: they stall, and then eventually time out (telnet localhost 143 produces no output at all, until I disconnect it). Even dovecot stop has trouble, taking several seconds before it returns me to the prompt, and *not* killing the existing process. dovecot -n is still happy however (and in a full configuration, components which don't require the services seem to work properly, such as dovecot-lda, if it doesn't require auth).
I'm not sure that I need those newer versions of dovecot, so I'll get back to version 2.0 for now. But I'd certainly like the option, and imagine that somebody else might care as to what the problem is!
-- Tommy Wareing