Pathetic Upgrade Question: 2.0.9 to 2.3.0

[Aki Tuomi]

Find responses between the lines.


On 08.01.2018 21:23, John Tulp wrote:
> My version output is below, under the heading "My actual question".
>
> Background to my woes:
> ===================
>
> I installed a new virtual machine with CentOS 6.9 (I'll refer to it as
> xxserverxx) and included the postfix server.  I configured a virtual
> network, did a decent job of hardening firewalls for both physical
> host and virtual guests.  I was able to get mail / mailx to send and
> receive mail on the command line using postfix using Maildir
> delivery.  Sent and received email to/from self as well as from an
> external email address hosted elsewhere.
>
> But not being satisfied enough with mailx mail client...
>
> wanting an IMAP client on the same 192 virtual private subnet, I used
> yum to install dovecot package from CentOS repositories on the virtual
> mail guest server.
>
> Configured mail client (Evolution installled via graphical interface
> on a CentOS 6.9 workstation on the same subnet), and configured
> dovecot, used mbox delivery, struggled with documentation to
> understand how server mail directories/files are actually used, fixed
> a problem or two, but did not have IMAP send and receive working.
>
> Then, wanting to be on the latest stable version of dovecot anyway, I
> downloaded dovecot 2.3.0 from dovecot.org and attempted to follow the
> instructions on building from source, but in the end all I could
> really find was the simple sequence of steps, make configure, make and
> make install, so that's what I did.
>

https://repo.dovecot.org has prebuilt packages if you want to give them
a try.

> Continued struggling with configuration (needing to be somewhat
> certain that defaults would not create a completely wide open mail
> server that would be hacked in 10 minutes, since this is on a real
> physical host with a public ip.  I actually got an email to get
> appended to the users mbox file.  Evolution Email client at one point
> actually logged into dovecot/IMAP and retrieved 3 received emails. 
> The problem is that Email client is now failing on permissions in
> creating index files.  I've gotten to the point of going to extreme
> measures to "fix" that file creation problem, but to no avail.
>
> Now unfortunately I've found an underlying problem to everything,
> going back to the beginning where I upgraded dovecot.
>
> My actual question:
> ================
>
> I don't want troubleshooting help, but help with documentation.
>
> It appears that make install has not replaced the old 2.0.9 binaries
> with new 2.3.0 binaries, even though it faithfully created everying
> under the /usr directories, e.g., /usr/bin, etc., and make install did
> not set some variable or otherwise configure for the new version to
> run instead of the old.  Well, maybe.
>

You should really have removed the old installation.

> Very scary (to me) in my maillog file, starting up and shutting down
> doevcot...
>
> Jan  6 16:15:59 xxserverxx dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.0.9 starting up
> (core dumps disabled)
> Jan  6 16:16:05 xxserverxx dovecot: master: Warning: Killed with
> signal 15 (by pid=5983 uid=0 code=kill)
> Jan  6 16:16:16 xxserverxx dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.0.9 starting up
> (core dumps disabled)
> Jan  6 16:21:02 xxserverxx dovecot: master: Warning: Killed with
> signal 15 (by pid=6056 uid=0 code=kill)
> Jan  6 16:23:39 xxserverxx dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.0.9 starting up
> (core dumps disabled)
>

That's just SIGTERM which is the normal way dovecot stops itself.
> Precisely how should this 2.3.0, built from source, be properly
> installed and configured to actually run the new version ?
>
> Here is what I currently get from --version and -n, just running in my
> root directory:
>
> [root at xxserverxx ~]# dovecot --version
> 2.3.0 (c8b89eb)
>
> [root at xxserverxx ~]# dovecot -n
> # 2.3.0 (c8b89eb): /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
> doveconf: Fatal: open(/usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf) failed: No
> such file or directory (copy example configs from
> /usr/local/share/doc/dovecot/example-config/)
>

You have forgotten to provide correct parameters for configure, e.g.
this is what is used by rpm building for centos6

./configure --build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
--host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
--program-prefix= --prefix=/usr --exec-prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/bin
--sbindir=/usr/sbin --sysconfdir=/etc --datadir=/usr/share
--includedir=/usr/include --libdir=/usr/lib64 --libexecdir=/usr/libexec
--localstatedir=/var --sharedstatedir=/var/lib --mandir=/usr/share/man
--infodir=/usr/share/info 'INSTALL_DATA=install -c -p -m644'
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/dovecot-ce --disable-static --disable-rpath
--with-nss --with-shadow --with-pam --with-gssapi=plugin
--with-ldap=plugin --with-sql=plugin --with-lua=plugin $'\302\240'
--with-pgsql --with-mysql --with-sqlite --with-zlib --with-libcap
--with-libwrap --with-ssl=openssl --with-ssldir=/etc/pki/dovecot-ce
--with-solr --with-docs

> Here is root's path:
>
> [root at xxserverxx ~]# env|grep -i path
> PATH=/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin
>
> Perhaps, of course, the new versions are running.  Of course, it
> appears that the dovecot executable can't find config files.  So why
> would my maillog say that the old version is running ?  Perhaps it's
> the new executable running with some leftover config from the old
> version ?
>
> Obviously I have not a clue as to the following, and these are my
> questions:
>
> a) what determines from which directories are each and every dovecot
> executable runs (i.e., normal plus any oddball) ?
> b) under what userid is each one run ?
> c) what determines from which directories are each and every dovecot
> config file is read ?
> d) when I install a new version of dovecot, how do I control which
> versions of config and executables are used at runtime ?
>
> Is there a place in the documentation where all this is contained in
> one place in a nice organized table ?
>
> My mitigating workaround:
> =====================
>
> I can of course start over, creating a brand new mail server VM,
> WITHOUT installing dovecot 2.0.6, and then JUST download the 2.3.0 and
> build and install it.  At least then I will only have 1 version of
> dovecot present on the virtual machine to deal with.
>
> But the obvious question then remains:
>
> After my NEXT dovecot upgrade, I'm back in the quagmire, needing to
> know a) b) and c) above.
>
> I am confident that dovecot is not lacking in this department, I just
> can't find what I'm looking for in the documentation.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> John
>

Aki
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