Written by UPDATE 1/10/13: I can confirm the following procedure will also work on RHEL6 / CentOS 6 upgrading from that system’s default Postfix 2.6.6 to Postfix 2.10.
UPDATE 2/1/13: I’ve also confirmed that these instructions work on the default Amazon EC2 Linux 2012.09 AMI.
CentOS 5 (a non-commercial clone of RedHat’s RHEL 5) is my server operating system of choice because it’s extremely stable and widely-used. One of the reasons it’s so stable is because the built-in software packages (and the software updates from the standard repositories) are generally (although there are always exceptions) older, more widely tested, patched, and secure versions of the most popular server daemons, such as the Apache web server, MySQL database server, and Postfix mail server.
This stability, however, comes with a price: if you want features from updated versions of a popular daemon, such as Postfix, you can’t just type “yum update postfix” to get the latest version.
As of this blog post, the latest version of Postfix that installs via yum on CentOS (using the standard repositories) is Postfix 2.3.3. But there have been a lot of great improvements to Postfix since that release, and the now-current version is Postfix 2.10. To take advantage of the features from this new version, you can easily build and install your own binaries from the Postfix source code and install the latest Postfix on RHEL / CentOS 5.
This tutorial assumes:
- You are running RHEL 5 or CentOS 5 (although I have also verified this exact procedure works on Fedora 12)
- You have a working Postfix install (most likely 2.3.3 on RHEL/CentOS or 2.6-2.7 on Fedora)
- You are using bash shell
If you have a different environment than noted above, then you’ll have to make whatever adjustments are necessary to make these instructions apply to you.
As always, backup first, follow these instructions at your own risk, do your best to understand what I’m recommending (rather than just following the steps blindly), and YMMV (your mileage may vary). 
Check the Previous Options (CentOS 5 only)
My overall goal when building Postfix from source was to build it with most of the same options as the 2.3.3 version that is installed by default on CentOS 5. So my first step was to find out what options were used when the default version was compiled by looking in /etc/postfix/makedefs.out. Mine looked like this:
# Do not edit -- this file documents how Postfix was built for your machine.
SYSTYPE = LINUX2
AR = ar
ARFL = rv
RANLIB = ranlib
SYSLIBS = -L/usr/lib -lldap -llber -lpcre -L/usr/lib/sasl2 -lsasl2 -L/usr/kerberos/lib -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lz -pie -Wl,-z,relro -ldb -lnsl -lresolv
CC = gcc $(WARN) -fPIC -DHAS_LDAP -DLDAP_DEPRECATED=1 -DHAS_PCRE -I/usr/include/pcre -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUSE_CYRUS_SASL -I/usr/include/sasl -DUSE_TLS -I/usr/kerberos/include
OPT = -O
DEBUG = -g
AWK = awk
STRCASE =
EXPORT = AUXLIBS=' -L/usr/lib -lldap -llber -lpcre -L/usr/lib/sasl2 -lsasl2 -L/usr/kerberos/lib -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lz -pie -Wl,-z,relro' CCARGS='-fPIC -DHAS_LDAP -DLDAP_DEPRECATED=1 -DHAS_PCRE -I/usr/include/pcre -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUSE_CYRUS_SASL -I/usr/include/sasl -DUSE_TLS -I/usr/kerberos/include ' OPT='-O' DEBUG='-g'
WARN = -Wall -Wno-comment -Wformat -Wimplicit -Wmissing-prototypes \
-Wparentheses -Wstrict-prototypes -Wswitch -Wuninitialized \
-Wunused
Where we want to pay attention is the EXPORT argument on line 12. This contains two important sections: AUXLIBS (the auxiliary libraries that were used when this version of Postfix was compiled) and CCARGS (the optional arguments passed to the C compiler).
The above output shows that the default version of Postfix on CentOS includes support for LDAP, PCRE, SASL, and TLS. It also used the -fPIC flag when compiled, which (according to Google but which I don’t totally understand) enables “position independent code.” Google also informed me that the -pie -Wl,z,relro options in CCARGS are used to “harden” compiled source code to make it less vulnerable to attack. Again, as a non-programmer, I don’t completely understand how this works, but I welcome further explanation from anyone in the comments!
Download and Unpack the Source Code
The source code for Postfix (including beta and past versions) can be downloaded from the Postfix Download Page. Choose a location close to you, then pick the release you want. For this example, I’m using the Postfix 2.10.0 stable release, which was released on February 11, 2013.
Download the source code to your server and save it in the /usr/local/src directory. Unpack the file (which will make its own subdirectory) with:
# tar zxvf postfix-2.10.0.tar.gz
Root vs. User
Technically, the creator of Postfix recommends that Postfix be compiled as an unprivileged (regular) Linux user then installed as root. However, I have to admit that I did all these steps as root, which is more dangerous, but it also meant I didn’t have to deal with directory permissions issues. Again, the official recommendation is to only install as root, so proceed at your own risk if you do it otherwise.
Install the Berkeley DB Development Files
Before compiling Postfix, you’ll need to install the Berkeley DB development files, which you can do with:
# yum install db4-devel
Choose Your Install Options
Depending on your specific needs, you can include more or fewer options when you compile Postfix yourself. Check section 4.3 of the Postfix Install readme for more information about which options are available and how to select them.
Again, my goal was to install Postfix with essentially the same options as the pre-compiled 2.3.3 that installs via yum, so these steps will reflect that.
Use the cd command to go into the directory where you unpacked the downloaded Postfix tarfile:
# cd postfix-2.10.0
In that directory, you’ll see a file called Makefile. This file includes all the options the the compiler will evaluate when you compile the new binaries. Don’t edit this file directly. Instead, you should use the make makefiles command to rebuild the Makefile with the options you want.
I recommend using a text editor to write a short script that includes all your desired make options first, then running that script to execute the make makefiles command.
First, find out whether you have a 32-bit or a 64-bit OS with:
uname -i
Then use your favorite text editor to copy and paste the appropriate example script below into a file called make_postfix.sh (put it in the same directory as all the Postfix source files).
For a 32-bit (i386 or i686) OS:
For a 64-bit (x86_64) OS:
Notice that only difference between the above scripts is that the 32-bit version uses /usr/lib and the 64-bit uses /usr/lib64.
When run, the example scripts above will create a Makefile with instructions to compile Postfix with TLS, SSL, Cyrus-based SASL_AUTH, LDAP, and PCRE support. I also kept the original fPIC and hardening options that were used in the original binaries. Postfix will compile and run just fine without them, but again – my goal was to make an updated set of binaries that were as close as possible to the original ones, so I kept them in there.
Adding Additional Support (such as MySQL)
If you need to compile Postfix with support for any additional options, then you’ll need to add support for them in your Makefile. For example, to add MySQL support, add a few necessary additional arguments to your make makefiles command so that it looks like this:
For a 32-bit OS with MySQL support:
For a 64-bit OS with MySQL support:
Build Your Makefile
Once you decide which of the example scripts to use to build your make file, just copy and paste the appropriate example into a text file called make_postfix.sh (make sure you create it in the same directory as the Postfix source files you just unpacked), or use any of them as a starting point to edit your own to customize for what you need. Once you create your make_postfix.sh script, you’ll need to make it executable and run it:
chmod 755 make_postfix.sh ./make_postfix
As the script runs, you’ll see a few lines of output as it processes, the last of which will include:
(cat conf/makedefs.out Makefile.in) >Makefile
Install Any Required Libraries
Depending on the CCARGS and AUXLIBS options you chose when updating your Makefile, you may need to install some development libraries before Postfix will compile properly and use them. For example, if you copied my options above, then you’ll need to install the Cyrus, OpenSSL, PCRE, and OpenLDAP libraries (along with their development files), which you can do with the following yum command (if you already have one or more installed, yum will skip them):
# yum install cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-devel openssl openssl-devel pcre pcre-devel openldap openldap-devel
If you selected other compile options, then you’ll need to install the appropriate libraries for your case. For example, you’ll also need the mysql-devel library installed if you’re compiling with MySQL support.
Make the Postfix Binaries
Once you’ve updated your Makefile with the desired options (and installed any required libraries), you’re ready to build the Postfix binaries. Type:
# make
Depending on the speed of your server, it may take a while for the compile to finish. You’ll see lots of output scroll by. If the final lines of the output contain any messages that include the word “Error,” or something else doesn’t look right, then you did something wrong. Don’t worry, just type:
# make tidy
to clean up the environment and follow the steps again. Check for libraries that should have been installed, or verify that you included the backslashes properly in your make makefiles command. If the make tidy command doesn’t work for some reason, just copy Makefile.init over the top of Makefile and run make tidy again. If things ever get really hosed, you can always just delete the newly created directory, unpack the Postfix package file and start over.
If everything seemed to compile correctly, you can move on to installing the new binaries.
Install the New Binaries
If you already have Postfix 2.3.3 running (and this tutorial assumes that you do), then you’ve already got an /etc/postfix/main.cf file you like, you’ve already got your /etc/aliases file configured, and you probably have a number of other existing files that you don’t want to replace. Good news! The following command will just upgrade the Postfix binaries without messing with your configuration files:
# make upgrade
You may get a message at the end of the upgrade process regarding files that exist on your system that are no longer part of Postfix, like this:
Note: the following files or directories still exist but are no
longer part of Postfix:
/etc/postfix/postfix-files
/etc/postfix/postfix-script /etc/postfix/post-install
/usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/README_FILES/QMQP_README
These files were part of the older Postfix 2.3.3 installation that are either no longer needed by the updated version of Postfix or that are now stored somewhere else. You can go ahead and delete them with:
# rm /etc/postfix/postfix-files # rm /etc/postfix/post-install # rm /etc/postfix/postfix-script # rm /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/README_FILES/QMQP_README
As of Postfix 2.9, IPV4 support needs to be explicitly stated in the Postfix main.cf file. So after the upgrade, you’ll also see the following:
COMPATIBILITY: editing main.cf, setting inet_protocols=ipv4. Specify inet_protocols explicitly if you want to enable IPv6. In a future release IPv6 will be enabled by default.
which is just telling you that the upgrade process automatically made the necessary changes to your main.cf file.
As of Postfix 2.10, the upgrade process will automatically insert an smtpd_relay_restrictions option in your main.cf file and inform you with this message:
COMPATIBILITY: editing /etc/postfix/main.cf, overriding smtpd_relay_restrictions to prevent inbound mail from unexpectedly bouncing.Specify an empty smtpd_relay_restrictions value to keep using smtpd_recipient_restrictions as before.
Post-Upgrade Configuration Changes
I suspect that with the later versions of Postfix, the make upgrade command you just ran probably took care of this next step, but it won’t hurt to do this next step manually just to be sure. Run the built-in script that verifies that your configuration files are good to work with the newer version of Postfix you just installed with:
postfix upgrade-configuration
Chances are you probably won’t see any output from the above command, which is fine.
However, one post-upgrade configuration change does need to be made manually. As of Postfix 2.10, the default method of the default master.cf now uses “unix” instead of “fifo” for the pickup and qmgr services in order to avoid periodic disk drive spin-up. Things will still work fine without changing, but depending on your system, making the following configuration change to the new default could speed things up for you. Edit /etc/postfix/master.cf and locate the lines that read:
pickup fifo n - n 60 1 pickup cleanup unix n - n - 0 cleanup qmgr fifo n - n 300 1 qmgr
and change them to read:
pickup unix n - n 60 1 pickup cleanup unix n - n - 0 cleanup qmgr unix n - n 300 1 qmgr
Restart Postfix
Finally, you’re ready to restart (a “reload” isn’t sufficient in this case) the updated version of Postfix with:
# service postfix restart
and your new version of Postfix should be humming along in place of your old one! You can verify this by doing:
# postconf -d | grep mail_version
The updated Postfix version will be displayed.
Congratulations! You’re running a current version of Postfix on RHEL 5 / CentOS 5!
Recommended: Prevent yum from “updating” Postfix
If you want to protect your manually compiled Postfix installation from being accidentally overwritten by a future yum update (for example, the upgrade from CentOS 5.5 to CentOS 5.6 will revert Postfix to a patched version of 2.3.3), you can instruct yum to exclude Postfix from future upgrades by adding the following line to your /etc/yum.conf file:
exclude=postfix*
If you ever change your mind and want to allow yum to attempt an upgrade, you can comment out or remove that line and then attempt your update.
Special Thanks to Jerrale Gayle for helping me with my original Makefile.
Related posts:
- Building Postfix 2.10 on RHEL6 / CentOS 6 from Source
- How to get DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) working with Postfix on RHEL 5 / CentOS 5 using OpenDKIM
- How to get DKIM and DomainKeys working with Postfix on RHEL 5 / CentOS 5 using OpenDKIM and dk-milter
- Installing OpenDKIM RPM via Yum with Postfix or Sendmail (for RHEL / CentOS / Fedora)
- How to Get ImageMagick 6.5.x or 6.6.x Working on CentOS 5.5
Great write up. Thanks very much. These instructions were concise and worked flawlessly.
You definitely saved me a ton of time on this. Cheers!
@Tim: Great to hear it! I used to depend on RPMs to install Postfix, but building from the source is more secure and clearly not that difficult, so I prefer it this way now.
You did a ‘make uprade’, and in the text it’s clear that the RHEL/CentOS Postfix package is still in place (otherwise upgrade wouldn’t make much sense). Don’t forget to exclude Postfix from your yum repository, because otherwise a ‘yum upgrade [postfix]‘ may overwrite your newly compiled Postfix-2.8.
/etc/yum.conf (for overall config):
exclude=postfix*
Thank you for this truly valuable article. Would you please clarify, after we have completed all this process and, for any reason, the new postfix installation doesn’t seem to work as expected, is it possible to roll back to the version running before the upgrade? That is, how can we uninstall the new 2.8.0 version? Can we automatically return to our previous version (postfix-2.3.3-2.1) or we must install it from scratch, after we remove 2.8.0?
Presuming you kept the source directory (and you should until you know you’re happy with it), just do a make uninstall and it should remove it. Then you can use yum to install 2.3.3 (but if you don’t want 2.8, you’d still be better off using 2.6 or 2.7).
Thanks Steve.
Please, allow me two more questions:
1/ Is there a way we can -minimally- test the newly compiled version before we do a “make upgrade”, so we at least know it is compiled correctly?
2/ Can we easily build an rpm (for example, using a command like “make rpm”) and then use it to upgrade (rpm -Uvh) rather than directly upgrading from source with “make upgrade”?
1) I don’t know of a way to test the compiled version, because it’s actually a number of binaries that interact with each other. However, reading through the compile output for fatal errors is the best way to verify that it compiled correctly. 2) Yes, you can certainly build your own RPMs.
Hi again,
I just followed your directions. I also included the vda patch for 2.8.0 which was published just yesterday (see http://vda.sourceforge.net)! In the parent dir of the source directory (say the source dir is postfix-2.8.0), place the downloaded file: postfix-vda-2.8.0.patch and then run:
# cd postfix-2.8.0
# patch -p1 < ../postfix-vda-2.8.0.patch
You get:
patching file README_FILES/VDA_README
patching file src/global/mail_params.h
patching file src/util/file_limit.c
patching file src/virtual/mailbox.c
patching file src/virtual/maildir.c
patching file src/virtual/virtual.c
patching file src/virtual/virtual.h
After that, I continued with your directions. "make" worked fine; however, after "make upgrade", when I restarted postfix, I found out that it wouldn't work with ldap. In the logs: "fatal: unsupported dictionary type: ldap".
I then tried to "make uninstall" but I got the message:
"make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop."
Then I did everything from the start, but I added to your "make makefiles" command the following line (in CCARGS):
-DHAS_LDAP -DLDAP_DEPRECATED=1 \
(I decided I should use it based on the output of /etc/postfix/makedefs.out, although I know nothing about it.)
Then, everything went fine. After "make", I did: "make upgrade" (without having uninstalled the previous version), and things went fine. LDAP support is now included. Thank God.
You may want to update your great article to include the above addition for correct support of LDAP (and optionally for including VDA).
A useful addition in your how-to would be to describe the correct additions (in "make makefile") to add mysql support.
Since uninstall did not work, it would be interesting to investigate how we could uninstall. Otherwise, we would probably not be able to install the 2.3.3 version again, in case of continued problem with the compiled version. I didn't try that, as I'm on a production server and have little opportunity for experimentation.
All the best.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions, Nick. I’ve added the LDAP arguments to my default Makefile instructions, and I also added additional examples for those who need MySQL support. I don’t really want to get into patching Postfix in this article, as that potentially opens a huge can of worms (especially for beginning users). Concerning the uninstall, that’s lame! I’ve never had to uninstall Postfix, but I’ll poke around a bit more to see what I can find. As you know, it’s always advisable to try things out on a test server before deploying them on production servers. Of course, that’s not always possible – but it’s always preferable.
Thank you Steve,
By the way, I would like a clarification about the “huge can of worms” you mention with regard to patching. I agree, patching is a practice to be avoided, yet VDA (“Postfix Virtual Delivery Agent”) seems to be quite widespread (a lot of Postfix RPMs with VDA included are also available around). I wish full (per user) quota support could be integrated in Postfix as a standard feature, so we could avoid patching…
Are you aware of VDA-caused problems?
By “can of worms,” I mean troubleshooting – particularly for beginning users, for whom my “How To” posts are generally designed. I’m not saying that patching should be avoided… only that it should be used by those whose needs can’t be met by other means, who know what they are doing, and who are experienced enough to understand what the patch is doing and how it may affect downstream processes. I’m well aware of why some might want VDA, but it’s a topic that goes beyond the intent of this blog post. Have you emailed Wietse and suggested he include it a future version? He just may grant your wish!
I did it! It was but then I got the
“fatal: unsupported dictionary type: ldap” error.
When I run “postconf -m” I do not see ldap ?
My makedefs.out:
SYSTYPE = LINUX2
AR = ar
ARFL = rv
RANLIB = ranlib
SYSLIBS = -L/usr/lib64 -L/usr/lib64/openssl -lssl -lcrypto -lsasl2 -lpcre -lz -lm -lldap -llber -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib64/openssl -pie -Wl,-z,relro -ldb -lnsl -lresolv
CC = gcc $(WARN) -fPIC -DUSE_TLS -DUSE_SSL -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUSE_CYRUS_SASL -DPREFIX=\”/usr\” -DHAS_PCRE -DSNAPSHOT -I/usr/include/openssl -I/usr/include/sasl -I/usr/incl
ude
OPT = -O
DEBUG = -g
AWK = awk
STRCASE =
EXPORT = AUXLIBS=’-L/usr/lib64 -L/usr/lib64/openssl -lssl -lcrypto -lsasl2 -lpcre -lz -lm -lldap -llber -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib64/openssl -pie -Wl,-z,relro’ CCARGS=’-fPIC -DUSE_T
LS -DUSE_SSL -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUSE_CYRUS_SASL -DPREFIX=\”/usr\” -DHAS_PCRE -DSNAPSHOT -I/usr/include/openssl -I/usr/include/sasl -I/usr/include’ OPT=’-O’ DEBUG=’-g’
WARN = -Wall -Wno-comment -Wformat -Wimplicit -Wmissing-prototypes \
-Wparentheses -Wstrict-prototypes -Wswitch -Wuninitialized \
-Wunused -Wno-missing-braces
What did I do wrong? How to fix this?
Thanks.
– Marta
Hi, Marta. Did you install the openldap and openldap-devel packages with “yum openldap openldap-devel” ?
Hello,
How can I install postfix 2.8 in Fedora 13?
“make” does not work.
Any ideas?
@Josh: I’ll need something more specific in order to help. Do you have gcc installed (yum install gcc)? What’s the exact error make is giving you?
Hello,
Thank you
I did yum install gcc and it is working.
Hi Steve,
Thank you for your reply.
I do have openldap installed as you can see from the following:
“root@server]# rpm -qa | grep ldap
nss_ldap-253-25.el5
openldap-2.3.43-12.el5_5.3
openldap-devel-2.3.43-12.el5_5.3
”
Thanks.
Regards,
– Marta
@Marta: What Linux distro are you running?
I am installing postfix in another VPS.
Fedora 13 32 bits
I got an error message:
[root@dom postfix-2.8.0]# make upgrade
…
…
…
gcc -Wmissing-prototypes -Wformat -fPIC -DUSE_TLS -DUSE_SSL -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUS
E_CYRUS_SASL -DPREFIX=\”/usr\” -DHAS_PCRE -DSNAPSHOT -I/usr/include/openssl -I/u
sr/include/sasl -I/usr/include -g -O -I. -I../../include -DLINUX2 -c postcat.c
gcc -Wmissing-prototypes -Wformat -fPIC -DUSE_TLS -DUSE_SSL -DUSE_SASL_AUTH -DUS
E_CYRUS_SASL -DPREFIX=\”/usr\” -DHAS_PCRE -DSNAPSHOT -I/usr/include/openssl -I/u
sr/include/sasl -I/usr/include -g -O -I. -I../../include -DLINUX2 -o postcat pos
tcat.o ../../lib/libglobal.a ../../lib/libutil.a -L/usr/lib -L/usr/lib/openssl -
lssl -lcrypto -lsasl2 -lpcre -lz -lm -lldap -llber -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib/openssl -
pie -Wl,-z,relro -ldb -lnsl -lresolv
cp postcat ../../bin
[src/postconf]
awk -f auto.awk
touch autos_dummy
touch: setting times of `autos_dummy’: Bad address
make: *** [autos_dummy] Error 1
make: *** [update] Error 1
[root@dom postfix-2.8.0]# service postfix restart
Shutting down postfix: [FAILED]
touch: setting times of `/var/lock/subsys/postfix’: Bad addressK ]
[root@dom postfix-2.8.0]#
I try it on a fresh Fedora 13 32 bits installation and I got this error.
[root@dom postfix-2.8.0]# make
sr/include/sasl -I/usr/include -g -O -I. -I../../include -DLINUX2 -o postcat pos
tcat.o ../../lib/libglobal.a ../../lib/libutil.a -L/usr/lib -L/usr/lib/openssl -
lssl -lcrypto -lsasl2 -lpcre -lz -lm -lldap -llber -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib/openssl -
pie -Wl,-z,relro -ldb -lnsl -lresolv
cp postcat ../../bin
[src/postconf]
awk -f auto.awk
touch autos_dummy
touch: setting times of `autos_dummy’: Bad address
make: *** [autos_dummy] Error 1
make: *** [update] Error 1
[root@dom postfix-2.8.0]#
@Josh: Sorry, but these instructions are specific to Postfix 2.8 on a CentOS 5 box. Sometimes CentOS 5 -> Fedora 13 instructions are compatible, but Fedora 13 is a MUCH newer distro than CentOS 5, and it appears that in this case the instructions don’t “translate” directly. I wish I could help more, but I don’t currently have a Fedora 13 box set up to test, so I’m unable to reproduce the errors. I recommend trying the postfix-users mailing list to see if they can help you troubleshoot this specific case.
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)
Linux server 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jan 5 17:52:25 EST 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Note: MTA is postfix (not sendmail)
Thanks,
– Marta
@Marta: Those seem to be the right libraries. I have these ones installed in my system:
# rpm -qa | grep ldapopenldap-2.3.43-12.el5_5.3
python-ldap-2.2.0-2.1
nss_ldap-253-25.el5
php-ldap-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3
openldap-devel-2.3.43-12.el5_5.3
Looking at your make output, it looks like you may not be using the make makefiles command exactly as shown in this How To. Do a make tidy, then copy and paste the appropriate make makefiles command for your system above, and give it another shot.
Hi Steve,
It did work this time!
Thanks for your replies and all the help!
– Marta
Hey, that was a huge help. Saved a good hour of time, esp. with the configuration options for the makefile. Thanks a lot for this post.
Hi Steve,
Because we should never build packages as root, for completeness to your great tutorial, I give the following directions (which worked for my CentOS 5.6 64bit):
// Add group:
# groupadd swbuilder
// Add user (in the swbuilder group):
# useradd -c “Software Builder Account” -g swbuilder swbuilder
// Define password for user swbuilder:
# passwd swbuilder
**********
// Now, before changing user, install any additional required packages, according to the directions
// Switch to swbuilder user account:
# su swbuilder
// Go to our new home dir (/home/swbuilder):
# cd
// Get latest package from http://www.postfix.org/download.html
# wget ftp://anymirror/path.to/postfix-2.8.3.tar.gz
// Untar:
# tar zxf postfix-2.8.3.tar.gz
# cd postfix-2.8.3
// compile according to directions (there were no file ownership or other problems during compilation, which included ldap) and then:
# su root
# make upgrade
# postconf -d | grep mail_version
mail_version = 2.8.3
// Done.
Awesome tutorial. Thanks for helping me get up and running with mysql support on my REL server in no time.
Could we not just point YUM to an updated repository with more recent versions of Postfix? I can’t find any such repository, but I’m optimistic there may be something out there…
Hi, DeltaHF. I agree – it’s a pain to have to do this to get an updated version of Postfix on RedHat. I haven’t been able to find a reliable repo that has this either. I’m tempted just to create my own RPMs and host them myself
If you find a good repo, please share it and I’ll post it here.
That would be awesome, Steve. I’ve been looking all day and still haven’t found anything, even in the CentOS Plus and Fasttrack repositories listed here.
I’m surprised there isn’t more discussion/interest in this around the web, considering Postfix’s supposed popularity. Thanks for sharing your guide above, though – I’ll just compile it myself and see how it goes.
CentALT repo usually has updated versions for Postfix (and other software too). I’ve been using their packages for some time and I find they don’t have issues.
http://centos.alt.ru/repository/centos/
For example, using their RPMs I just upgraded httpd on my Centos 5.7 systems from the ancient included version to the latest. Everything went smoothly. (I might write a short how-to on it.)
Nick
Hi, I’m about to try your tutorial on my company’s mail server, I’m using RHEL 5 and I have some questions if you don’t mind.
Since this is the first time I’m attempting something like this i’d like to know what exactly should I backup, what are the cofiguration files or just files that I should save?
What about the user’s inboxes files or directories, should I do something about them?
Personally I’m using postfix, dovecot, and squirrelmail; by performing this update would I have to modify anything on my other services? or would it be transparent to them?
Thanks in advance.
Hi, Joel. Theoretically, this upgrade process won’t overwrite any of your configuration settings, but backing up main.cf and master.cf is still a good idea. This won’t touch your users’ mail files. However… if you’re managing your company’s mail server and don’t have a FULL backup plan in place for that server (regardless of this upgrade), that’s probably something you should also look at. But for this Postfix upgrade, as long as you stick to these instructions, nothing will be overwritten.
Thanks for the quick response Steve. Currently I’m preparing a test environment in another server where I’ll upgrade Postfix following your instructions. Should that test go right I’ll do it on the original mail server. I’ll keep you posted if anything goes wrong.
P.D. Would you happen to know how to migrate all data and configuration from one physical mail server to another?
I’ve never done it, but I’ve seen it discussed on the Postfix user email list. I’d recommend seeing if someone has a HowTo online, or ask on that email list. I’m sure someone there has done it.
Dear Steve ,
How can I check whether smtp auth is enabled after all these installations ?
What did Google say when you searched for “smtp auth test” ?
Search results probably included something like this:
http://www.networkclue.com/internet/smtp/manual-test-SMTPAUTH.aspx
I thought I would try to follow the same procedure on Centos 6, but there is no /etc/postfix/makedefs.out file (or anything similar) there… How can we know the build options of postfix on Centos 6 so we can build from source with the same options? Any experience/advice?
Thanks,
Nick
Is there a way we can build 2.8.x RPMs based on CentOS-standard-options postfix using a similar to the above procedure?
Can we find such (CentOS-standard-options) Postfix .src.rpm? Where?
Building RPMs would ease the process of upgrading a number of systems; otherwise, we would have to build Postfix on each system separately.
Thanks,
Nick
Postfix Multiple IP & Hostname
Already followed the instruction http://www.linuxmail.info/postfix-multiple-ip-address-smtp-greeting/
I want that each time using 1 SMTP to send email, it just shows the information of 1 IP & 1 host name in the email header. Now I see that it always shows the information of Main IP & Main Hostname.
Detail in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aCk7vvbP341FR2kd4zXqDVkZlE_8DArUrT6wlOZoiH0/edit
Thank you so much!
Hi steve,
i’ve a problem with “make upgrade”, it give me this message:
Please review the INSTALL instructions first.
I’ve try with postfix-2.9.3 and postfix-2.8.7.
Thanks
no one has the same problem
Important addition: After upgrading, following the directions of the article, you must run:
# postfix upgrade-configuration
Otherwise you might end up with problems in your configuration for the new (upgraded) postfix version!
Hi Nick,
can you hel me for this message:
[root@ns1 postfix-2.9.3]# make upgrade
Please review the INSTALL instructions first.
Thanks
type “make update” before “make upgrade” that’s work for me
hi. I’m building a mail server with postfix in centos 5.5.
I want to replace the postfix 2.10.0 transport protocol that used TCP to SCTP. and I do not know how to do it. Can you help me Mr. Steve Jenkins..??