On 16 Jun 2017, at 10:29, lists@lazygranch.com wrote:

I'm bringing up a new email server starting without TLS initially. In 10-ssl.conf I set ssl = no, but the default ssl_cert and ssl_key lines are not commented out. I got the obvious error message:

doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file /usr/local/etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf line 12: ssl_cert: Can't open file /etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem: No such file or directory /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dovecot: WARNING: failed to start dovecot

No big deal, but I don't remember this being an issue the last time I set up a server. You would think if ssl=no, the ssl_cert and ssl_key files would not be opened.

My guess is you have set ssl_cert=</etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem and it fails to read the file. At that stage it has no idea that ssl=no makes that file irrelevant - only much later will Dovecot ignore the value of ssl_cert because ssl=no, but it never gets there because this initial stage of reading the config has already failed. This is, as I recall it, the sensible explanation I got from one of the Dovecot developers.

Kind regards,

Peter van Dijk PowerDNS.COM BV - https://www.powerdns.com/