Knowledgebase

Symptoms

Dovecot encounters a configuration fatal error.

doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf 
line 42: The first setting must be dovecot_config_version

Description

Updating to cPanel 132 includes a Dovecot version upgrade from 2.3 to 2.4. The Dovecot upgrade introduces numerous changes, which can cause the service to fail to start if customizations are enabled. Most commonly, customizations are applied to Dovecot via the template files.

• Filename in question: /var/cpanel/templates/dovecot/main.local

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product. 

Workaround

1. Disable the local Dovecot template to return to the default configuration variables.

   mv -v /var/cpanel/templates/dovecot/main.local{,.$(date +%s)}

2. Rebuild the configuration and restart Dovecot.

   /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/builddovecotconf && /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/restartsrv_dovecot

3. For servers using Imunify360, run the following command.

   imunify360-agent config show | jq ".PAM.exim_dovecot_protection"

4. If the output is true, the following command must also be run.

   imunify360-pam set-dovecot pam