Upgrades and such…

Well, last night I held my breath and did an upgrade on our main web/mail/everything else server. It was running CentOS 3.3 and I upgraded to CentOS 4.1. This server started life as a Red Hat Linux 9.0 server. Then, I upgraded it to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (which Red Hat did not recommend, by the way… but a helpful support guy talked me through it.) Then, when my support contract expired with Red Hat on that server, I moved to CentOS. So, last night wasn’t as bad as it had been in the past (as upgrades go), but (a BIG BUT!) after the upgrade, SquirrelMail didn’t work! Doom! I have to have SquirrelMail! Basically, any IMAP service was gone! Turns out that Red Hat has moved to Cyrus IMAP from Courier IMAP. Cyrus IMAP is not straightforward to configure. (OK, all you Cyrus IMAP geeks… I know you will say, “Of course it is!” So, give me a break!) I finally un-installed all Cyrus IMAP packages from the system, and went with Dovecot IMAP. Budda-bing! SquirrelMail is back! Life is good! My wife, Belinda says, “Why do upgrades? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!” Well… it is a geek thing. I gotta be “caught up” on my servers. It just is the way it is. Not to mention more secure. So, live a little, go for the “edge”… do a server upgrade. Dewd.