Vladislav Kurz via dovecot said on Mon, 9 Mar 2026 10:29:41 +0100
Dne 06. 03. 26 v 18:05 Steve Litt via dovecot napsal(a):
If you haven't yet transitioned from 2.3.x to 2.4.x, I'd suggest that you get it running on a test machine before cutting over, because there are some surprises.
I know it is off topic, but can you be more specific, what should I watch for? I have several dovecot servers waiting for upgrade...
The most specific I can get is watch out for EVERYTHING having to do with configuration. It's completely different, with different defaults, in some cases different meanings for the same config options, in other cases different names for the same config options, with meanings and possible values perhaps the same and perhaps changed.
Not only is it completely different, but it's superficially similar enough to fool you. Meanwhile, after all these months it's still difficult to locate 2.4.x specific Dovecot docs, so web searches, AI queries and even questions to live humans often get answered with 2.3.x answers.
Aki answered your "what should I watch for" question by mentioning you should review https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html . This is the best answer to your question, but in my opinion that question should come later. The first question should be "by what process do I convert my configuration file(s)? And the answer to that question depends on your situation, your abilities and disabilities.
Some people don't have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and impatience. For such people, https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html doesn't look like "a wall of words" with heavy recursion to other pages. For such people, reading and understanding this document enables them to intelligently translate their 2.3 config to 2.4. Some people are highly skilled professional admins (not developers, admins, there's a big difference). Such people seem to just "know how" to do config. They use Aki's suggested page as a reference. Speaking of developers, some people are developers working on 2.4.x. Such people know this stuff because heck, they wrote it. They sometimes refer back to Aki's suggested page. Some people are geniuses with stratospheric IQs. They somehow just "figure it out" by means I can't even contemplate. All these people have an easier time translating 2.3 to 2.4, but every one of them should do it first on a test setup, because only a crazy person deploys something new on the live system before running it in a test environment.
Then there are people like me, and there are a lot of us. Average intelligence, ADD, impatient, either lightly or moderately familiar with Dovecot (after all, til now once you got it working you could coast for years). People like me must rewrite the config files from scratch, starting with a 127.0.0.1 no-SSL "Hello World", and building up, step by step, to what we need, on our test environment. In such a situation, Aki's suggested document becomes an educational tool, as does the conversion program at https://dovecot.org/upgrader/ , as does (very badly at this point) AI, as does this mailing list.
So, to reiterate, my answer to your question "what should I watch for?", my answer is "everything concerning configuration, but the bigger priority is matching your process to your abilities and disabilities, assets and liabilities."
SteveT
Steve Litt