(prispevek zformuloval GPT chatbot na zaklade mych velmi strucnych poznamek)
After a long-planned upgrade from Ubuntu 18 LTS straight to Ubuntu 24 LTS, I discovered that outgoing e-mail was no longer being signed with OpenDKIM.
What followed was a small adventure involving masked services, silent
failures, and a missing package. Here is the full story for anyone who
runs into the same issue.
1. First symptoms: DKIM signing stopped working
Right after the upgrade, outgoing mail lost its DKIM signatures.
A look into /var/log/mail.log showed a clear clue:
Port 8892, where OpenDKIM normally listens, was not responding:
So the DKIM milter was simply not running.
2. Trying to start OpenDKIM — and finding it masked
My next step was obvious: check the service.
Status confirmed it:
Why the upgrade masked the service is unclear, but unmasking is straightforward:
This time the service started—at least according to systemd.
But DKIM signatures were still missing.
3. Adding debug logging
To see what was going on, I enabled more verbose logging by adding to /etc/opendkim.conf:
After that:
The service looked healthy, no visible errors... but still no signs of DKIM signing.
4. The surprising discovery: OpenDKIM wasn’t installed (!?)
Running locate gave the final hint:
It essentially returned nothing.
At this point it became clear: the service files were present, but the actual OpenDKIM binary was not installed (a side effect of the distribution jump).
A quick explicit install solved everything:
And — voilà — DKIM signing immediately started working again.
5. Conclusion
Upgrading directly from Ubuntu 18 → 24 can leave some services in a strange state. In my case:
-
opendkim.service was masked after the upgrade
-
The service files survived, but the binary package was missing
-
Postfix failed to talk to the milter (Connection refused)
-
Installing OpenDKIM manually restored full functionality