How to upgrade Exim safely?

[websafe]

I'm currently running DirectAdmin:

# /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin v
Version: DirectAdmin v.1.60.4

on Centos

# cat /etc/centos-release
CentOS release 6.10 (Final)

with CustomBuild 2.0.0 and with Exim:

# exim -bV
Exim version 4.90_1 #8 built 10-Mar-2018 18:37:10
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge, 1995 - 2017
(c) The Exim Maintainers and contributors in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file, 2007 - 2017
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 4.7.25: (March 22, 2017)
Support for: crypteq IPv6 Perl OpenSSL move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning DKIM DNSSEC Event OCSP PRDR
Lookups (built-in): lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmjz dbmnz dnsdb
Authenticators: cram_md5 dovecot plaintext spa
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Configure owner: 0:0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /etc/exim.conf

using exim.pl:

# grep VERSION /etc/exim.pl
#VERSION=16

and exim.conf:

# head -n 5 /etc/exim.conf
######################################################################
#                 SpamBlocker.exim.conf.2.1.1-release                #
#                             05-Jun-2007                            #
#   Runtime configuration file for DirectAdmin/Exim 4.24 and above   #
#          Requires exim.pl dated 20-Apr-2007 17:09 or later         #

and dovecot:

# dovecot --version
2.0.9

I want to upgrade exim to the newest version, but I dont wan't to end up with serious problems
I have read:

+ https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=125
+ https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=51
+ https://forum.directadmin.com/threads/exim-4-92.57532/#post-296083


This looks very simple:

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build set exim yes
./build exim

but is this all? Or should I maybe do:

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build set exim yes
./build set eximconf yes
./build set eximconf_release 4.5
./build set spamassassin yes
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

Is there somewhere a complete description of how to upgrade Exim on a production server?

 

[Richard G]

It depends to if you have made custom settings to your exim.conf or not. If not it's quite easy.
You're almost there but I would change the order of things a little bit.

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build set exim yes
./build set eximconf yes
./build set eximconf_release 4.5
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

Now this should take care of updating your exim.conf and exim.pl too. The exim.pl is also very important, check if it updated to.

To prevent maybe issues, it's best to do spamassassin afterwards from the same directory:

./build set spamassassin yes
./build update
./build spamassassin

I would also recommend to enable blockcracking and easy spam fighter after this.