I'm trying to install Dovecot onto my QNAP NAS. I apologise for this! It
means I'm not working in a normal environment, and don't (necessarily)
have the normal range of tools available (or the most up to date version
of those tools).
It seems that 2.0.21 works (at least, as far as I've tested), but 2.1.17
and 2.2.4 won't start up their child services.
I've got the source code for all three from
http://www.dovecot.org/download.html, and, for experimental purposes,
I'm configuring with:
./configure --prefix=/opt
The configure script ends by reporting:
Install prefix . : /opt
File offsets ... : 64bit
I/O polling .... : epoll
I/O notifys .... : inotify
SSL ............ : yes (OpenSSL)
GSSAPI ......... : no
passdbs ........ : static passwd passwd-file shadow checkpassword
: -pam -bsdauth -sia -ldap -sql -vpopmail
userdbs ........ : static prefetch passwd passwd-file checkpassword nss
: -ldap -sql -vpopmail
SQL drivers .... :
: -pgsql -mysql -sqlite
The dovecot.conf I'm using, at the moment, is the absolute minimal to
fire things up:
protocols = imap
listen = *
ssl_cert = </opt/etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key = </opt/etc/ssl/private/dovecot.pem
dovecot -n is happy, and reports those four lines back to me.
When I start this up, I get, in /var/log/messages file:
Jul 10 10:09:28 QNAP mail.info dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.0.21 starting up
(core dumps disabled)
and ps shows:
[admin at qnap dovecot]# ps -ef | grep dovecot
admin 11478 1 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 /opt/sbin/dovecot
dovecot 11479 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/anvil
admin 11480 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/log
admin 11482 11478 0 10:09 ? 00:00:00 dovecot/config
admin 11525 455 0 10:10 pts/5 00:00:00 grep dovecot
All is right with the world! Well, until I try to use dovecot
properly, at which point I'll need a full configuration. But it's
alright so far! :)
However, if I go through the same routine with Dovecot 2.1.17, I get the
appropriate message in messages:
Jul 10 10:12:45 QNAP mail.info dovecot: master: Dovecot v2.1.17 starting up
(core dumps disabled)
But this time, ps shows:
[admin at qnap dovecot-2.1.17]# ps -ef | grep dovecot
admin 15259 1 0 10:12 ? 00:00:00 /opt/sbin/dovecot
admin 15294 455 0 10:12 pts/5 00:00:00 grep dovecot
and the child services don't seem to have started. This is born out by
the fact that no network connections work: they stall, and then
eventually time out (telnet localhost 143 produces no output at all,
until I disconnect it). Even dovecot stop has trouble, taking several
seconds before it returns me to the prompt, and *not* killing the
existing process. dovecot -n is still happy however (and in a full
configuration, components which don't require the services seem to work
properly, such as dovecot-lda, if it doesn't require auth).
I'm not sure that I need those newer versions of dovecot, so I'll get
back to version 2.0 for now. But I'd certainly like the option, and
imagine that somebody else might care as to what the problem is!
--
Tommy Wareing