I basically did the same thing a month or so ago. I would recommend that you not just move to the new server, and then upgrade it. If there are issues that arise during the upgrade, your server will be down while you resolve them. What I did was to upgrade the new server first. I copied all the postfix and dovecot configuration files to the new server and then tested it using telnet to the new IP address to receive emails and to retrieve them. Pay close attention to the log files while doing this. There might be warning messages that you won’t notice when things just work.
Once you have the new machine configured and working properly, then shut down postfix and dovecot on both servers. I waited for postfix until mailq showed nothing in the queue. That made things easier. Then copy the mail files to the new server. At that point you will probably need to change the IP addresses on both machines and then restart dovecot and postfix on the new server. The only issue I encountered was that the log files on the new machine do not reflect that days transactions before the move. I did move all the old log files to the new server. Thus log analysis was a bit wonky for that day. Other than that, everything went smoothly. My mail server down time was only about 10 minutes and I was up and running on all new versions. I use packages as it is more convenient and much quicker to upgrade. -- Doug > On Jun 7, 2025, at 05:55, Eugene R via dovecot <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello! > > I am planning a migration of the Postfix/Dovecot mail system to a new FreeBSD > server. > > In recent years, I have come to prefer the official ports/packages > installations; however, the FreeBSD port of Dovecot is still at 2.3.21 which > is substantially different from the current upstream 2.4.1. > > I have no problems with installing from sources (have been doing that for a > long time) but I wonder what is the recommended approach with regard to the > installation and configuration paths. I would prefer to follow the standard > conventions and eventually switch to the ports-based install once it catches > up, with minimal disruption and reconfiguration. > > Thank you in advance > Eugene > > _______________________________________________ > dovecot mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] _______________________________________________ dovecot mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
