How to renew the SSL certificates for dovecot and postfix

Make a backup of the existing SSL key and certificate file

cd /etc/pki/dovecot
cp -a certs/dovecot.pem certs/dovecot.pem.old
cp -a private/dovecot.pem private/dovecot.pem.old

Create the new SSL certificate for two years:

openssl genrsa -out private/dovecot.pem 1024
openssl req -new -x509 -key private/dovecot.pem -out certs/dovecot.pem -days 730

Restart Dovecot and Postfix

sudo systemctl restart dovecot
sudo systemctl restart postfix

Check the start and end dates for the certificate:

openssl x509 -dates -in certs/dovecot.pem