Re: [Evolution] Importing mails from v 1.4 to 2.0.4 on Debian

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> Hi,  I've installed debian sarge on my desktop pc. Before i was using
> fedora core 2 with ximian 1.4, my inbox was very big (14000 mail
> messages) and I've made an backup of the directory
> /home/gsalas/evolution .
>
> Once the Debian was installed, i've restored my backup to
> /home/gsalas/.evolution but my older mail messages does not appears in
> the inbox.

The following discussion mainly is just for the records, as I
coincidentally wrote it a couple of days past anyway. If you do not have
the GConf directory backed up, it will not solve your issue. See below.

(Andre: We should seriously start hacking the FAQ at GUADEC. Does
someone volunteer to borrow the laptop we'll need? ;)


First of all some basics: Both 1.4.x as well as 2.x.y do store (most of)
the settings using GConf, thus they are in ~/.gconf/apps/evolution. Evo
1.4.x still uses the old ~/evolution directory for data, which changed
to the hidden directory ~/.evolution since 2.0.0.

*If* there is *no* new Evo data which you want to keep on the target
machine  you should remove those dirs first to cleanly import your old
1.4.x data. Namely that is:

On the *target* machine remove the directories ~/evolution (if it
exists), the new data dir ~/.evolution as well as the settings dir
~/.gconf/apps/evolution. Be sure to kill all backend tasks *first*
before messing with those dirs: 'evolution --force-shutdown' will close
the Evo backend tasks and 'gconftool-2 --shutdown' will shut down the
GConf daemon. If you don't do this, the date still will be in memory!
After removing those dirs, we got a clean Evo environment on the target
machine.

Then copy over the old data from the source machine to the target
machine. You will need the Evo 1.4.x dirs, which are ~/evolution (not
hidden) and ~/.gconf/apps/evolution. Again, be sure to kill all backend
tasks on *both* machines before copying the data. Adjust the user and
group of those files on the target machine, if necessary.

When done, you can start Evo 2.x.y on the target machine for the first
time again. It will identify an old 1.4.x environment and migrate all
your data and settings. This may take a while...


Be careful and always have backups handy of your data. Paranoia saves
your day!


> I've tried with Control+I to import file, but nothing occurs:
>
> No importer available for file
> /home/gsalas/evolution/config/et-expanded-file:_home_gsalas_evolution_local_Inbox
>
> What is the file that I've to select to import my 14000 messages? Do
> you know any other way to import it ?

If you do not have the GConf files mentioned above backed up, you still
can import your old mails. Either use the import function, or simply
drag-n-drop the relevant mbox file from Nautilus to an already existing
mail folder (the mail list). This will import those mails.

The "relevant" file is somewhere in the backed up ~/evolution directory.
I don't remember where exactly. But you should be able to easily find it
digging around in that dir:

It's inside a directory structure that looks just like the structure Evo
1.4 displayed in the tree view, like ~/evolution/local/ or something.


HTH

...guenther


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0  ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}