[Dovecot] How Can I Tell How Dovecot Was Installed?
I'm trying to help someone with Dovecot, and it looks like this one is a few versions behind.
They say that they're not sure if it was installed Via an RPM or a source tarball. Dovecot is use MySQL.
This is a RHEL5 server. There are RPMs listed as installed (rpm -qa) but I don't know how I can tell what was used to install the currently used set up. (also asking on the Postifix list)
Is there something in a conf file or something that shows me how it was installed?
Thanks Blake
Blake Carver wrote:
I'm trying to help someone with Dovecot, and it looks like this one is a few versions behind.
They say that they're not sure if it was installed Via an RPM or a source tarball. Dovecot is use MySQL.
This is a RHEL5 server. There are RPMs listed as installed (rpm -qa) but I don't know how I can tell what was used to install the currently used set up. (also asking on the Postifix list)
Is there something in a conf file or something that shows me how it was installed?
same method as for postfix :)
more generally, # rpm -qa lists all the installed packages
see the rpm man page for more options/functionalities (you can check which package "owns" a file, and you can get the list of files installed by a pckage, ... etc).
mouss wrote:
Blake Carver wrote:
I'm trying to help someone with Dovecot, and it looks like this one is a few versions behind.
They say that they're not sure if it was installed Via an RPM or a source tarball. Dovecot is use MySQL.
This is a RHEL5 server. There are RPMs listed as installed (rpm -qa) but I don't know how I can tell what was used to install the currently used set up. (also asking on the Postifix list)
Is there something in a conf file or something that shows me how it was installed?
same method as for postfix :)
more generally, # rpm -qa lists all the installed packages
Unless, like he said above it may have been installed via a tarball.
dovecot --versionworks for my /really/ ancient version. (Yes, I am too embarrassed to say which version.) You should and see if there is more than one installed and if so at how dovecot is started at startup/boot to know which one is used.
So try a 'which dovecot' to see if you have more than one installed. And if there is more than one look in /etc/init.d (for SysV-type systems
- YMMV) for a dovecot file and see which one it is calling.
Rod
see the rpm man page for more options/functionalities (you can check which package "owns" a file, and you can get the list of files installed by a pckage, ... etc).
Thanks Rod,
So I guess my big question here is, how do I upgrade this sucker? I'd love to just use an RPM, but if this was originally installed via source will I mess it up? When I do rpm -qa | grep dovecot I get dovecot-1.0-1.2.rc15.el5 BUT dovecot --version shows me a different #
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Roderick A. Anderson raanders@acm.org wrote:
Unless, like he said above it may have been installed via a tarball. dovecot --version You should and see if there is more than one installed and
So --version shows just one version, 1.0.3 (pretty damn old)
So try a 'which dovecot' to see if you have more than one installed. And if there is more than one look in /etc/init.d (for SysV-type systems - YMMV) for a dovecot file and see which one it is calling.
'which dovecot' just gives me /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
Taking a look at /etc/init.d/dovecot shows me it's staring Dovecot using /usr/local/sbin/dovecot and ps auxw | grep dovecot does show that's the one that's running /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
Blake Carver wrote:
Thanks Rod,
So I guess my big question here is, how do I upgrade this sucker? I'd love to just use an RPM, but if this was originally installed via source will I mess it up? When I do rpm -qa | grep dovecot I get dovecot-1.0-1.2.rc15.el5
I think the default for RHEL 5. CentOS 5, etc.
BUT dovecot --version shows me a different #
Meaning your are not running the RPM installed version.
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Roderick A. Anderson raanders@acm.org wrote:
Unless, like he said above it may have been installed via a tarball. dovecot --version You should and see if there is more than one installed and
So --version shows just one version, 1.0.3 (pretty damn old)
So try a 'which dovecot' to see if you have more than one installed. And if there is more than one look in /etc/init.d (for SysV-type systems - YMMV) for a dovecot file and see which one it is calling.
'which dovecot' just gives me /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
Taking a look at /etc/init.d/dovecot shows me it's staring Dovecot using /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
My guess (without know what "dovecot --version" reported) would be that you are probably running a tarball installed version.
A quick check of the repositories, including rpmforge, indicates the latest "official distribution" version is 1.0.7-2.el5.
To get the latest and greatest you'll have to either build your own RPM or do a tarball install.
Good computing, Rod
and ps auxw | grep dovecot does show that's the one that's running /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
On 8/20/2008, Roderick A. Anderson (raanders@acm.org) wrote:
To get the latest and greatest you'll have to either build your own RPM or do a tarball install.
Or just use atrpms.net...
Why anyone would knowingly run ancient versions of critical apps is beyond me.
--
Best regards,
Charles
Because it isn't busted?
Charles Marcus wrote:
Why anyone would knowingly run ancient versions of critical apps is beyond me.
--
Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504 sdean@bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035
On 8/20/2008 11:35 AM, Stewart Dean wrote:
Because it isn't busted?
Just because you don't *think* its busted doesn't mean its not...
Of course, I'm not saying that running an up to date version completely solves this question - *all* s/w has bugs, its just a matter of when they are discovered - but I'd rather be running a version that has fixes for *known* bugs/issues - not to mention the performance improvements, new features, etc.
But of course, thats the nice thing about free software... we're all free to do it our way...
:)
--
Best regards,
Charles
--On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:23 AM -0400 Charles Marcus CMarcus@Media-Brokers.com wrote:
Why anyone would knowingly run ancient versions of critical apps is beyond me.
Stability. It's not uncommon for apps to be interdependent. Upgrading one can have unexpected consequences in another app.
For this reason, RHEL back-ports fixes for critical apps rather that automatically upgrading to the latest version. For it to do so, it needs to have patches for specific issues registered in Bugzilla.
For those of us willing to take the risk of wholesale upgrade to the bleeding edge, we can grab an RPM from Red Hat's Rawhide distro. My practice is usually to grab the source RPM and rebuild it to match the libraries I have on my distro (CentOS 5).
In some cases, 3rd party distros like atrpms.net and RPMForge carry the latest version pre-built for many distros. If I need a package that RPMForge supports, I'll grab the binary from there.
Blake Carver wrote:
Thanks Rod,
So I guess my big question here is, how do I upgrade this sucker? I'd love to just use an RPM, but if this was originally installed via source will I mess it up? When I do rpm -qa | grep dovecot I get dovecot-1.0-1.2.rc15.el5 BUT dovecot --version shows me a different #
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Roderick A. Anderson raanders@acm.org wrote:
Unless, like he said above it may have been installed via a tarball. dovecot --version You should and see if there is more than one installed and
So --version shows just one version, 1.0.3 (pretty damn old)
So try a 'which dovecot' to see if you have more than one installed. And if there is more than one look in /etc/init.d (for SysV-type systems - YMMV) for a dovecot file and see which one it is calling.
'which dovecot' just gives me /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
Taking a look at /etc/init.d/dovecot shows me it's staring Dovecot using /usr/local/sbin/dovecot and ps auxw | grep dovecot does show that's the one that's running /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
so you're somewhat lucky: the software was installed (probably from source) in a well known place (/usr/local). you can remove this by looking at all dovecot and postfix files under /usr/local/. you can do the same for other software. yum and rpm don't install software in /usr/local/. you'll have to remove startup scripts as well.
once you've removed all the "old" stuff, you can install new packages (if you have a development env somewhere, you can build recent SRPMs instead of using the old available ones).
--On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:22 PM -0400 Blake Carver lists@lisnews.com wrote:
They say that they're not sure if it was installed Via an RPM or a source tarball. Dovecot is use MySQL.
This is a RHEL5 server. There are RPMs listed as installed (rpm -qa) but I don't know how I can tell what was used to install the currently used set up. (also asking on the Postifix list)
Is there something in a conf file or something that shows me how it was installed?
RPM is a database of installed files and their checksums. The RPM commands unpack files and update the database, or remove files and update the database. The best you can do here is to query the database to see if the files it knows about match those on the disk. For that, use "rpm -V -v dovecot". That does a verbose verify and tells you what files it knows about have been changed in some way.
I recommend periodically running "rpm -Va" and dumping the result to a file. This will reflect the current state of the system. (You should expect that configuration files will show up in this report as modified.) Then create a cron job that performs the same command and diffs the result against your snapshot. This will alert you of any unexpected changes.
participants (6)
-
Blake Carver
-
Charles Marcus
-
Kenneth Porter
-
mouss
-
Roderick A. Anderson
-
Stewart Dean