Mailcow access problem after PHP upgrade from PHP 7.4 to 8.2

Pixitronsa

I am using Mailcow (dockerized) for two years and it was perfectly running until I decided to upgrade from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.2. After this upgrade, I could not access mailcow any longer (not sure if that update is related, but something must have happened during this process). The domain name successfully points to the public www folder but I cannot access any docker container (mailcow). The ports do not respond.

For a few days I am now trying to find a solution to get my mail.domain.tld again to access mailcow UI and domain.tld/sogo to reach SoGo (right now: 404 error for SOGo). I sent a test e-mail to one of the inboxes on that mailcow server and it came back with an error.

I installed Portainer now where all containers are successfully listed, I installed NGINX (running besides Apache now) trying to manually set up a reverse proxy. Without success. I also just installed NGINX Proxy Manager in Portainer.

In Portainer I can access both the Portainer and NGINX Proxy Manager containers/apps using (clicking on) the port number (domain.tld:port). But trying the same with mailcowdockerized container ports results in error messages in the browser (“This site can’t be reached. [IP number] refused to connect.”).

As mentioned above, I manually tried to set up NGINX proxy following these instructions: https://docs.mailcow.email/post_installation/reverse-proxy/r_p-nginx/

After that, mail.domain.tld was pointing to an error page in the browser saying:
"What is happening?
Please do not stop the stack while we are initializing the database or do other preparations. (…)"

I tried out a lot but without success so far.
Can anyone help? Thanks!

esackbauer

Pixitronsa I decided to upgrade from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.2.

Why you decided so? What else is running on your host, requiring such an upgrade?

Pixitronsa

esackbauer

Thanks for your reply. Only Mailcow (dockerized) is running on that host. I upgraded to the latest PHP version as a “best practice” to keep the server updated (to avoid security risks). Do you think this was not necessary? Is mailcow incompatible with PHP 8?

esackbauer

No, that was not necessary. You seem to not properly understand what containers are and how isolated they are from the host system.
Upgrading PHP on the host does nothing to the containers as they have their own PHP versions. Thats the whole point of containerization, so that you can run on any other operating system/version.
BTW Debian 11 still supports PHP 7.4 as it was released with PHP 7.4. They issue also security updates for PHP 7.4.
It also seems you have installed a web server like apache or nginx on that mailcow host (which is not necessary as mailcow brings its own nginx), as that would be the only explanation why you have PHP on that host.

My guess is that PHP8 changed something on the port bindings of that web server, and now mailcow cant bind to these ports anymore.
Remove any webserver you installed on the host. And maybe PHP as well. Make a backup before that, just in case. But you do have backups, right? 😉

Pixitronsa

Thanks again for your reply. I was finally happy to solve the issue.

There might have been a couple of problems in the end, since I tried out a lot after the original PHP upgrade which had caused the situation. The main steps that brought the cow back was editing binds, ports and SQL passwords. The cow is back in the pasture.