Hello!
I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new FreeBSD server.
In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at 2.3.21 which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1.
I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-based install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and reconfiguration.
Thank you in advance Eugene
On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM Eugene R via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
Hello!
I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new FreeBSD server.
In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at 2.3.21 which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1.
I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-based install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and reconfiguration.
Thank you in advance Eugene
The most important parts of Dovecot are the files in etc/dovecot/ and these, IIRC, don't refer to any absolute paths. So you could just use "./configure --prefix=/opt/dovecot2.4" and add your favorite options to install Dovecot. Once 2.4 hits the FreeBSD ports, you'll simply move these files to /usr/local/etc/dovecot and you are done.
PS: I might not have understood your dilemma since you mentioned that you've been installing from sources for a long time.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM Eugene R via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote: Hello!
I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new
FreeBSD server.
In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages
installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at
2.3.21
which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1.
I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that
for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with
regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to
follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-
based
install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and
reconfiguration.
Thank you in advance
EugeneThe most important parts of Dovecot are the files in etc/dovecot/ and these, IIRC, don't refer to any absolute paths. So you could just use "./configure --prefix=/opt/dovecot2.4" and add your favorite options to install Dovecot. Once 2.4 hits the FreeBSD ports, you'll simply move these files to /usr/local/ etc/dovecot and you are done.
PS: I might not have understood your dilemma since you mentioned that you've been installing from sources for a long time.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart- questions.html]
Hello,
Yeah, I had, but at that time I was not planning on eventual merge ))
So, do I understand correctly that, in spite of that, it is still best to keep "my" dovecot and its config in a separate tree (and only merge the config in the end) rather than try to match the "official" paths?
On 07.06.2025 16:47, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM Eugene R via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
Hello! I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new FreeBSD server. In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at 2.3.21 which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1. I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-based install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and reconfiguration. Thank you in advance EugeneThe most important parts of Dovecot are the files in etc/dovecot/ and these, IIRC, don't refer to any absolute paths. So you could just use "./configure --prefix=/opt/dovecot2.4" and add your favorite options to install Dovecot. Once 2.4 hits the FreeBSD ports, you'll simply move these files to /usr/local/etc/dovecot and you are done.
PS: I might not have understood your dilemma since you mentioned that you've been installing from sources for a long time.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
Hello, Yeah, I had, but at that time I was not planning on eventual merge )) So, do I understand correctly that, in spite of that, it is still best to keep "my" dovecot and its config in a separate tree (and only merge the config in the end) rather than try to match the "official" paths? On 07.06.2025 16:47, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM Eugene R via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote: Hello!
I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new
FreeBSD server.
In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages
installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at
2.3.21
which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1.
I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that
for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with
regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to
follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-
based
install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and
reconfiguration.
Thank you in advance
EugeneThe most important parts of Dovecot are the files in etc/dovecot/ and these, IIRC, don't refer to any absolute paths. So you could just use "./configure --prefix=/opt/dovecot2.4" and add your favorite options to install Dovecot. Once 2.4 hits the FreeBSD ports, you'll simply move these files to /usr/local/ etc/dovecot and you are done.
PS: I might not have understood your dilemma since you mentioned that you've been installing from sources for a long time.
-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS. "Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-) [How to ask smart questions: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart- questions.html]
On Sat, 2025-06-07 at 20:33 +0300, Eugene R via dovecot wrote:
Hello,
Yeah, I had, but at that time I was not planning on eventual merge ))
So, do I understand correctly that, in spite of that, it is still best to keep "my" dovecot and its config in a separate tree (and only merge the config in the end) rather than try to match the "official" paths?
I am not familiar with the freebsd package manager (pkg) nor how you set it up to ensure user provided configs are not overwritten nor whether your own package uses same (conflicting) package name as the other one.
IMHO, as long as:
(a) the official and your own package do not change, replace or delete the configs when installed or upgraded.
(b) the 2 packages "conflict" with each and cannot be simultaneously installed.
Then there is no reason not to always put them in the one standard place. In fact, IMHO, it is the better choice.
I assume (a) is always true, otherwise the package manager would be pretty awful to use in practice.
However if either constraint above is violated, then probably better to keep the configs for each unique to it's own package since, for all intents and purposes, the 2 packages are distinct and separate.
-- Gene
I basically did the same thing a month or so ago. I would recommend that you not just move to the new server, and then upgrade it. If there are issues that arise during the upgrade, your server will be down while you resolve them. What I did was to upgrade the new server first. I copied all the postfix and dovecot configuration files to the new server and then tested it using telnet to the new IP address to receive emails and to retrieve them. Pay close attention to the log files while doing this. There might be warning messages that you won’t notice when things just work.
Once you have the new machine configured and working properly, then shut down postfix and dovecot on both servers. I waited for postfix until mailq showed nothing in the queue. That made things easier. Then copy the mail files to the new server. At that point you will probably need to change the IP addresses on both machines and then restart dovecot and postfix on the new server. The only issue I encountered was that the log files on the new machine do not reflect that days transactions before the move. I did move all the old log files to the new server. Thus log analysis was a bit wonky for that day. Other than that, everything went smoothly. My mail server down time was only about 10 minutes and I was up and running on all new versions.
I use packages as it is more convenient and much quicker to upgrade.
-- Doug
On Jun 7, 2025, at 05:55, Eugene R via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
Hello!
I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new FreeBSD server.
In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at 2.3.21 which is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1.
I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that for a long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with regard to the installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to follow the standard conventions and eventually switch to the ports-based install once it catches up, with minimal disruption and reconfiguration.
Thank you in advance Eugene
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participants (4)
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Doug Hardie
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Eugene R
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Genes Lists
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Odhiambo Washington