Support Debian 13 and Dovecot 2.4

Dovecot 2.4 has compatibility-breaking changes, so configs will need upgrade:
https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20250310165315/https://doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html

Dict passdb & userdb driver are removed and they say to switch to Lua.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 19:27 -0800, l wrote: Dict passdb & userdb driver are *removed* and they say to switch to Lua.

:( :( :(

Trixie (Debian 13) is out but Bookworm (Debian 12) is still maintained until 2028.
There is an idea to try to update our custom dovecot 2.3 fork (with the speed patch) to 2.4 and provide it for Debian 13, which would allow the whole template to be upgraded. I'd postpone this question to beginning of 2026, and leave things at Debian 12 for now.

I managed to successfully configure Dovecot 2.4 to run with Delta Chat, but admittedly it's not feature complete (I'm not exposing port 25, no DKIM, etc). If anyone is looking into this, I've made my configuration available at https://codeberg.org/kassner/chatmail-container, might be a good starting point to migrating the configuration.

i started to only use normal email servers, it is more and more an issue since server providers are not always offering an old version of debian.

and since this equivalent to a vendor lock-in exists i probably should not use this.

how about doing something crossplatform/crossversion instead of drowning this with outdated dependencies?

My cookbook officially supports Debian 13 Trixie now. Other than some Chef/Ruby related changes I had to work around whch are unrelated to Chatmail, everything went smoothly.

Just get Dovecot 2.3 packages built for Trixie and comment out that anvil service in the dovecot config which causes an error:

Jun 04 20:44:15 trixiechat dovecot[9492]: auth: Error: net_connect_unix(anvil-auth-penalty) failed: Connection refused

# Unsure why but you have to comment this out on Trixie:
service anvil {
    # We are disabling anvil penalty on failed login attempts
    # because it can only detect brute forcing by IP address
    # not by username. As the correct IP address is not handed
    # to dovecot anyway, it is more of hindrance than of use.
    # See <https://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2012-May/135485.html> for details.
    unix_listener anvil-auth-penalty {
        mode = 0
    }
}

We have started building the packages at https://github.com/chatmail/dovecot; and #1002 has code to support it, but we want to hold off merging this until more people had a chance to test it.

This testing you speak of - is that testing Deb 12 -> 13 migrations, or testing fresh installs of chatmail/relay to Debian 13?

Both should work, but I think even after an upgrade to Debian 13 it is imperative that you run cmdeploy to validate everything is still correct.

OK, I'll have a go at a Deb fresh install, and let you know how it goes

I just went ahead and did a Deb 12 install, as it wasn't obvious how to test out the new Deb 13 patches/PR

I just went ahead and did a Deb 12 install, as it wasn't obvious how to test out the new Deb 13 patches/PR

sorry about the delay, I was traveling.

There's a branch here but I'm not sure of its completeness at this time.

This is probably obvious, but I can assure everyone that a stock Deb 13 install of Deltachat chatmail relay will currently fail spectacularly. Deb 12 should be used, as the docs say to.

This is probably obvious, but I can assure everyone that a stock Deb 13 install of Deltachat chatmail relay will currently fail spectacularly. Deb 12 should be used, as the docs say to.

If you really want Debian 13 you can use my Cookbook method to install the relay. This is tested and working; the e2ee.wang server is using it successfully. Review the README to understand how this is different than cmdeploy. One important distinction is that it does DNS validation for the TLS certificates, not HTTP validation, so you'll need a Lego-compatible DNS provider and an API key.

I just went ahead and did a Deb 12 install, as it wasn't obvious how to test out the new Deb 13 patches/PR

Just switch to the branch before deploying, I added an example .

Just a quick note to confirm that the branch worked flawlessly to deploy a new instance on a new server running debian 13

(I acknowledge that 12 will be supported for another 2 years, but 13 has been out for over a year and is what I expect anyone like me (deploying a new server) will assume will work and install before even checking the docs, try anyway, get frustrated, find this thread, and the branch, worry about future updates, etc.)

Branch j4n/dovecot-multidist (#1002) mentioned above is about using Dovecot 2.3 on newer distros.

Dict protocol dependency is removed at #1049 recently, so we may upgrade to Dovecot 2.4. This still requires config updates.

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Support Debian 13 and Dovecot 2.4 #476

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Support Debian 13 and Dovecot 2.4 #476

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link2xt commented on Jan 25, 2025

hpk42 commented on Jan 25, 2025

hpk42 commented on Aug 12, 2025

kassner commented on Oct 9, 2025

halcyondazer commented on Apr 6, 2026

feld commented on Jun 5, 2026

j4n commented on Jun 8, 2026

esbeeb commented on Jun 18, 2026

feld commented on Jun 19, 2026

esbeeb commented on Jun 20, 2026

esbeeb commented on Jun 20, 2026

feld commented on Jun 22, 2026

esbeeb commented on Jun 24, 2026

feld commented on Jun 24, 2026

j4n commented on Jun 29, 2026

M0YNG commented on Sep 8, 2026

link2xt commented on Sep 8, 2026

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