Rough idea of how long a Maildir/Dovecot conversion takes

[macconnect]

We have an older box still running vm-pop3d and uw-imapd. We'd like to go through the customapache dovecot migration. Only 390 mailboxes and its only been in active use for mail for a few days now, so the time to upgrade to dovecot is now before the thing gets too busy.

Does anyone have any rough idea of how long the "todovecot" conversion might take on a gig or so of old mbox mailboxes? I'm hoping its going to less than an hour, but I don't want to get into the middle of the process and find out its going to be an 8 hour affair.

 

[nobaloney]

It depends on how much resources (memory, processor speed, disk speed) on your server, and how much email. It can be time and resource intensive.

Jeff

 

[macconnect]

There's plenty of horsepower under the hood on that particular box, and hopefully since we're not dealing with a ton of mail on there it won't take too long to complete the todovecot step. Am I correct in assuming that exim, vm-pop3d and uw-imapd are going to be stopped during that process? Converting mail accounts while they're in flux sounds like a bad idea.

 

[nobaloney]

You are correct. I've never had a conversion take over four hours, and most mail servers are content to keep trying at least four hours (if they can't connect because a server is down) before reporting a receipt problem back to the sender.

Jeff