Module 8 · Lesson 17 of 26

The update.sh workflow

Part of Mailcow: Self-Hosted Mail Server Mastery — Upgrades, Migrations & Version Pinning.

Mailcow ships update.sh in the repo root. It pulls new container tags, regenerates configs, and brings the stack up.

Standard upgrade:

cd /opt/mailcow-dockerized
./update.sh -c     # show changelog only
./update.sh        # actually upgrade

What it does:

git fetch and check for new commits on master.
Diff your mailcow.conf against mailcow.conf.example and warn about new variables.
docker compose pull new image versions.
docker compose down and up -d.

Best practices:

Read ./update.sh -c BEFORE running. Breaking changes are flagged with !!!.
Take a backup snapshot first (backup_and_restore.sh backup all).
Upgrade in a low-traffic window — there's typically 30–90 s of downtime.
After upgrade, check docker compose ps — every container should be healthy or running.

Pulse · self-hosted sending

Own the infrastructure your pipeline depends on.

One install script on your own server. Pulse sets up the MTA, mailboxes, certificates and dashboard; you add domains and start sending.

# on a fresh Ubuntu server

$ cd pulse && sudo ./install.sh

→ docker compose up · kumomta · stalwart · caddy

→ dashboard ready on https://pulse.yourdomain.com