I finally have my main mail server moved to a new machine. It hasn't been updated since 2014, so it's way past time.

Seems that if you become comfortable with postfix/dovecot/sieve etc. config 7 years ago, that doesn't help much. It took me quite a while to finally get everything configured and working again. My config files were too old to just copy over. I had to manually config everything over again and finally got it.

So 7 years from now, I'll forget how and need to do it all over again :)

Retro Guy
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Posted on Rocksolid Light

I can't for the life of me remember how to configure my mail server with postfix/dovecot. Lots of reading and fixing issues that I've already solved some time in the past. Thankfully it's a rare thing to do.

I assume your mailserver was a CentOS machine, 7 years seems like a long time.
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Posted on novaBBS

Anonymous wrote:

I can't for the life of me remember how to configure my mail server with postfix/dovecot. Lots of reading and fixing issues that I've already solved some time in the past. Thankfully it's a rare thing to do.

Yes, it's rare. postfix/dovecot run well and you just use it instead of worry about it.

I assume your mailserver was a CentOS machine, 7 years seems like a long time.

It was Debian, as is the new server. I had run CentOS previous to that then eventually moved everything to Debian.
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Posted on Rocksolid Light

Here's something I just learned and hope to never do again:

If you 'apt remove exim4-base' on a server running inn2, it will remove inn2 also. Fortunately it doesn't remove config, etc., but it sure scared me!

Retro Guy
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Posted on Rocksolid Light

Retro Guy <retro.guy@rocksolidbbs.com> wrote:

If you 'apt remove exim4-base' on a server running inn2, it will remove inn2 also. Fortunately it doesn't remove config, etc., but it sure scared me!

inn2 requires a mail system:

Depends: libc6 (>= 2.28), libdb5.3, libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.28 (>= 5.28.0), libsasl2-2 (>= 2.1.27+dfsg), libssl1.1 (>= 1.1.1), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), cron | cron-daemon, default-mta | mail-transport-agent, time, procps, perl, perlapi-5.28.1, libmime-tools-perl, lsb-base

default-mta | mail-transport-agent

I just tried here on Debian stable, but as I do not use exim4-base but
postfix, the results are a bit different:

apt-get remove postfix
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light
Suggested packages:
  exim4-doc-html | exim4-doc-info eximon4 spf-tools-perl swaks
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  despam-check mail-admin postfix postfix-ldap postfix-pcre
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2070 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1542 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] ^C

So, in my case it proposed to replace postfix by exim4, which is the
best behaviour if I want to keep inn2, indeed.

And of course I did not press ENTER to accept this selection.

And as you said, Debian keeps configuration files unless you add --purge
to your removal.

PS: yes, I only use apt-get and not apt, since apt is not
    scriptable.

Marc SCHAEFER wrote:

Retro Guy <retro.guy@rocksolidbbs.com> wrote:

If you 'apt remove exim4-base' on a server running inn2, it will remove inn2 also. Fortunately it doesn't remove config, etc., but it sure scared me!

inn2 requires a mail system:

Depends: libc6 (>= 2.28), libdb5.3, libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.28 (>= 5.28.0), libsasl2-2 (>= 2.1.27+dfsg), libssl1.1 (>= 1.1.1), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), cron | cron-daemon, default-mta | mail-transport-agent, time, procps, perl, perlapi-5.28.1, libmime-tools-perl, lsb-base

default-mta | mail-transport-agent

Yes it does. I planned to remove exim4 and install postfix, so I quickly, without paying attention, went to remove exim4. It's my own fault for not taking my time and reading :)

I just tried here on Debian stable, but as I do not use exim4-base but
postfix, the results are a bit different:

And as you said, Debian keeps configuration files unless you add --purge
to your removal.

Which is great. I do have a full server backup, but that would be time consuming and a couple of days out of date. Fortunately, all is well on the server now, and postfix is up and running.

Most of my servers send mail to my main mail server (postmaster, root, etc.), and use my main server as their mx server. This all works fine, but this one server had exim and I had trouble trying to get it to send as I'm not very familiar with exim. Postfix is working fine now.

PS: yes, I only use apt-get and not apt, since apt is not
    scriptable.

I usually use apt-get but again, sometimes I get lazy and want to type less :)

Retro Guy
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Posted on Rocksolid Light