[Dovecot] A strange fact of misconfiguration

Virtualmin
1

What is happened has strange connotations but I would share with you the experience and understand WHY it happens.

Since a couple of days, let say a week, emails don’t work. Ok, NO problem, experience teached me to have a solid email and use the website-related emails as ‘collateral’, not main.
The problem was that I have a booking system based on an email of a site that I hold on my virtualmin, and I had great issues. Eventually today I saw that Dovecot mail server was down, and as I had in the past same similar problem, used the same command to have a diagnostic response:

The unique was:

Fatal: Error in configuration file /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf line 1: Expecting '{'

I watched in the related file 10-ssl.conf but I saw only a CA inside, such as:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIFFjCCAv6gAwIBAgIRAJErCErPDBinU/bWLiWnX1owDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAw
TvZaBFOvV2z0gp35Z0+L4WPlbuEjN/lxPFin+
HlUjr8gRsI3qfJOQFy/9rKIJR0Y/8Omwt/8oTWgy1mdeHmmjk7j1nYsvC9JSQ6Zv
MldlTTKB3zhThV1+XWYp6rjd5JW1zbVWEkLNxE7GJThEUG3szgBVGP7pSWTUTsqX
nLRbwHOoq7hHwg==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

(of course changed the 50% of the encryption above)This was very strange, I was watching something differend. From 3pm to now (10:15pm), watchin almost allover the files but nothing. Dovecot didn’t restart. Dead, Same error always.

Luckily I do have a backup system that allows me to find file systems, not all, but I’ve been so happy to see that a copy of the compromised file was inthere and copied and pasted. Saved applied the configuration and now it turned to work. Almost perplex for what is happened, do someone can give me a valid explaination and why this happens? I mean: a encrypted certificate instead of a configuration file…who changed it?

Please let me know, problem is solved, but it could happen again and again.
And last but no least: Dovecot can be replaced by some other software, due the pain that every time gives to me? OF course always integrated with Virtualmin.

Thank you.

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version Almalinux 9.3
Webmin version 2111
Virtualmin version 7.10.0 pro
Related packages Dovecot
2

That doesn’t make sense. That’s supposed to be a Dovecot configuration file. Why would you replace it with an SSL certificate?

3

Maybe I am not clear enough: after the response of the error, I went into the file to try to put the bracket on the first line where “the system suggested” perhaps it was missing.
I didn’t find a configuration file, but a certificate.
How could be happen this??? This is what am I asking for. I didn’t touch nothing, as if I don’t need to touch the file system, I dont.

4

How would I know how it happened? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

You should have a configuration file, and we certainly don’t replace it with a certificate. As I said, it doesn’t even make sense for there to be a cert there. Putting a curly bracket around it won’t make it any more valid. It’s not a thing that goes there.

You should restore that file from a backup.

5

did you read my firts post? I already did it, it worked, fixed the problem. But I still don’t know how could be happen, Dovecot is continously giving problem with emails that use webmail (site:20000), that’s why I was asking if, instead, there is some better software. Complatible with Virtualmin.
This is the second time that I solve a problem with dovecot that make me waste a bunch of time despite I use to only update the packages when available. Nothing else.

6

A bogus configuration file isn’t Dovecots fault.

Dovecot is the only fully supported IMAP/POP3 server, but you could certainly install and configure Cyrus yourself, if you prefer. These is no GUI support for Cyrus, but we don’t technically care what IMAP/POP server you use.

7

I just use MS Outlook but Roundcube is another good webmail option besides usermin webmail.

there is also snappymail (fork of rainloop) or Afterlogic.

Nextcloud also has an inbuilt mail client which is okay’ish if you use nextcloud anyway.

Dont know what went wrong in your conf file, it usually does not contain a cert.

8

That’s off-topic. We are not talking about mail clients, we’re talking about Dovecot, which is a IMAP/POP3 server.

9

Dovecot is continously giving problem with emails that use webmail

That was my hook.

10

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