[Dovecot] could not start dovecot - unknown section type

Daminto Lie dlie76 at yahoo.com.au
Thu Jan 12 07:19:42 EET 2012


Thank you for your reply.

Yes, you're right. I should not have called it an upgrade since I actually removed dovecot 1.2.9 completely and installed the dovecot 2.0.17 from the source. Later, I mucked up the init file because I still used the old version one. I'm sorry about this. 


I remember I tried to upgrade by running doveconf -n -c dovecot.conf > dovecot-2.conf, I got an error message saying doveconf: command not found. Then, I tried to google it to find solutions but to no avail.

This is why I decided to install it from scratch.

Thank you for your help



________________________________
 From: /dev/rob0 <rob0 at gmx.co.uk>
To: dovecot at dovecot.org 
Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2012 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Dovecot] could not start dovecot - unknown section type
 
On Wednesday 11 January 2012 20:30:49 Daminto Lie wrote:
> I was wondering if I could get some help with the following error
> when trying to start dovecot service on Ubuntu Server 10.04.
> 
> The error message is as follows
> 
>  * Starting IMAP/POP3 mail server
> dovecot                                      
> 
> Error: Error in configuration file
> /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf line 15: Unknown section type
> Fatal: Invalid configuration in
> /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf [fail]
> 
> 
> I have just managed to upgrade it from 1.2.19 to 2.0.17. Then, I
> tried to start the dovecot by running the command
> 
> 
> $ sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot start
> 
> And I received the above message.

It would seem that you did not upgrade the init script, and the old 
one is reading the config file and expecting a different format. You 
used source to upgrade, which means you did not "upgrade" in the 
conventional sense -- you installed new software.

Either fix the script or run without it:
    dovecot start

See:
    http://wiki2.dovecot.org/CompilingSource
    http://wiki2.dovecot.org/RunningDovecot

> Below is the configuration for dovecot.conf
snip
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