12.04 & 12.10 serverguide for configuring SASL is outdated

Bug #1018548 reported by Craig Harman
76
This bug affects 15 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ubuntu Server Guide
Triaged
Undecided
Peter Matulis
Trunk
Triaged
Undecided
Peter Matulis

Bug Description

The instructions in the "Configuring SASL" section of the Postfix page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/postfix.html#postfix-sasl

describes changes that need to be made to the Dovecot configuration file /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf, but in Ubuntu 12.04 the lines that need to be changed have moved to the configuration file /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf.

Specifically...

The documentation currently contains the paragraph "Next you will need to edit /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. In the auth default section uncomment the socket listen option and change the following:", followed by this excerpt from the /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf file that was included with older versions of Ubuntu:

  socket listen {
    [...]
    client {
      # The client socket is generally safe to export to everyone. Typical use
      # is to export it to your SMTP server so it can do SMTP AUTH lookups
      # using it.
      path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth-client
      mode = 0660
      user = postfix
      group = postfix
    }
  }

The configuration lines above do not appear in the /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf file that is distributed with Ubuntu 12.04's Dovecot packages.

In Ubuntu 12.04 the lines that need to be uncommented to configure SASL are found in the file /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf:

  # Postfix smtp-auth
  #unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
  # mode = 0666
  #}

Please note that the default path for the socket in the 10-master.conf file is "/var/spool/postfix/private/auth". The "SMTP Authentication" section of this help page:

  https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/postfix.html#postfix-smtp-authentication

tells users to run this command to tell Postfix where to find the SASL socket:

  sudo postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth-client'

but running this command will tell Postfix to look for a socket at "/var/spool/postfix/private/auth*-client*", which does not match the default socket path in the Dovecot configuration file 10-master.conf. In order to match the default Dovecot socket path "/var/spool/postfix/private/auth", the correct postconf command to use is:

  sudo postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth'

---
Using Ubuntu 12.04, dovecot-[core|common] 1:2.0.19-0ubuntu1.

Problem with documentation discovered when the upgrade from 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS broke my SASL configuration.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in ubuntu-docs (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Jan Claeys (janc) wrote :

Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the "12.04 Server Guide" is outdated...

(And it doesn't help that Dovecot isn't entirely backwards compatible either...)

Revision history for this message
Tom Reynolds (tomreyn) wrote :

It's one thing not to provide current documentation. It means another quality to provide documentation which claims to be up to date but is actually outdated. On a distribution which not too long ago declared server installations one of its key features and USP.

An up to date documentation which does work for Ubuntu 12.04 is available at http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/PostfixAndDovecotSASL

affects: ubuntu-docs (Ubuntu) → serverguide
summary: - 12.04 serverguide for configuring SASL is outdated
+ 12.04 & 12.10 serverguide for configuring SASL is outdated
Changed in serverguide:
status: Confirmed → Triaged
assignee: nobody → Peter Matulis (petermatulis)
Revision history for this message
Tom Reynolds (tomreyn) wrote :

This documentation has since been reworked (for later Ubuntu releases), Ubuntu 12.04 is EOL (apart from ESM) and its documentation is gone.

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