Re: [Evolution] Evo: backing up & restoring to new machine

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 09:42 +0200, Bram Mertens wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 17:08, Not Zed wrote:
> > For local email, the important locations are ~/evolution or
> > ~/.evolution >= version 1.5.
> > 
> > If you do them, you will get all your local email back, regardless of
> > any other settings.
> > 
> > Add
> > ~/.gconf/apps/evolution
> > 
> > if you also want your settings (version 1.4 or later, otherwise just
> > ~/evolution).
> > 
> > But you must shutdown gconf before restoring the files otherwise it
> > may not pick them up properly.
> > (gconftool-2 --shutdown).  Also you should shut it, and evolution,
> > down before taking the backup, for consistency.
> [...]
>
> Interesting, seems like my backups aren't that foolproof as I thought
> them to be...
>
> Are there any issue we should be aware of when shutting down the gconf
> daemon this way?
>
> gconftool-2 --help says:
>   --shutdown                                     Shut down gconfd. DON'T USE
>                                                  THIS OPTION WITHOUT GOOD
>                                                  REASON.
> I'm not running gnome (fluxbox) but I might have other gnome apps
> running while creating a backup, could they experience problems when
> this daemon is shut down?
Perhaps. I'm not entirely sure.  If you're doing a backup you probably want to shut down everything anyway.  Certainly you may wish to backup all application configuration at the same time.

And on the flip side - it is absolutely necessary to do this for a restore, but isn't as required for a backup.  If your apps are quiesent gconf isn't going to be writing to those files anyway.  Depends on how lucky you feel I guess.

> And how should this daemon be restarted?  Will starting evo take care of
> this?  Reading the help I would assume this is the case:
>   --spawn                                        Launch the config server
>                                                  (gconfd). (Normally happens
>                                                  automatically when needed.)
yes it will restart as required.

Michael Zucchi <notzed ximian com> Ximian Evolution and Free Software Developer

Novell, Inc.