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This is a bit of a dumb question, but how do I install the newest stable of dovecot on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server? I'm still a bit new to ubuntu and linux in general.

The newest stable is v2.2.1, but in the ubuntu repository it's only v2.0.19. The backports repository is only at v2.1.7-2.

I would rather not install from source since it seems like huge trouble when trying to upgrade and handling old dependencies.

I found their stable deb packages here, but how does it relate to the command:

apt-get install dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d

Does the deb file contain both dovecot-imapd and dovecot-pop3d or whatever else I need to install dovecot?

Bak
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1 Answers1

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You question can be broken down into different questions:

  • Installing from the official repositories will provide me the latest version?

No, the version from stable repositories is commonly not the latest version, but a less recent version that has been tested for reliability, security and stability. If one wants the latest version of a package, usually you have to visit the project site or google for the official page and download and compile the source or, if available, the binaries.

  • If I install from source, will I get automatic updates?

No.

  • If I install the binaries, will I get automatic updates?

It depends. Usually binaries that you decompress and run (like .sh files) will not get updates from apt-get.

Occasionally, some .deb files might contain information for installing new repositories (dropbox acts this way), and in this case if you install their .deb files you will get automatic updates from ap-get and system updates.

  • How do I install manually a new repository?

The link you provided is not a link to the deb files themselves (they are located here), but to a dovecote repository. You can follow these instructions to add this repo to your repo list, and then use pining to install the latest version of dovecot.

Community
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That Brazilian Guy
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  • Thanks for the explanation! The latter seems to be the easier way to go in terms of future maintenance. – Bak Apr 24 '13 at 14:52
  • If I added ../stable-auto/dovecot-2.2 to my repo list, what happens if dovecot-3.0 comes out? Will I have to manually remove dovecot-2.2 and add the dovecot-3.0 repo to get updates? I'm guessing currently apt-get will pull any updates that are in v2.2.x? – Bak Apr 24 '13 at 14:57
  • If it does, it may be a major version change that may break things. In which case not automatically updating is best since you will want to test to see if anything is broken before deploying. – Journeyman Geek Apr 25 '13 at 11:06