[Evolution] Restore backup problem...

[Philippe Chartier <chartiep cybersciences com>]

Hi, 

I recently partly crashed my system (Mandrake 8.2). Something got
corrupted in my KDE deskstop settings and my user (chartier2) was nearly
useless (the menu, Mime types, etc. disappeared).

I realized that from another user (chartier3) everything was fine.

So, I copy the ~/evolution folder from the chartier2 to chartier3 user.
I change the user's ownerships on all files and sub-folders in the
~/evolution folder. 

But it wasn't enough because weird problems appeared. For example, I got
messages saying that permission was not granted for the Sent folder when
sending messages. Same thing for the Drafts folders when saving drafts.

The problem was that the paths pointed to the old user's directory
(/home/chartier2/evolution/local/Sent) instead of the new user's
(/home/chartier3/evolution/local/Sent).

I had a look and found that the paths were quite wrong in the
config.xmldb file. 

In fact, since it is not the first I had to switch user (I had to do it
once before - another partial crash), I noticed paths in config.xmldb
that pointed to the first user (chartier).

I searched and replaced all the wrong paths to go to the new location.
It seems better, no message anymore, but is it enough to fix everything?
I'm particularly afraid of losing messages that maybe got stuck in the
previous users directory?!?

In the future, what would be the good way to restore a backup? 

For example, having the user's directory with the same filename?

And if it is not possible, what do we have to do?

It would be much simpler if everything was using relative paths to
evolution's directory. But I've read on the list's archives that it
wasn't possible.

Thank you in advance!

-- 
Philippe