Re: [Evolution] migrating mail form 1.4 to 2.4

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> I am switching distros. The old distro ran Evolution
> 1.4.x and the new one runs Evolution 2.4.x. I want to
> move the mail from the old distro to the new one. I
> did google searches and searches on Evolution's web
> pages, but couldn't find any instructions on how to do
> this. The best I found was how to manually recreate
> the directory tree, then manually move and rename the
> files. But since I keep my mail in a directory tree
> with hundreds of folders multiple levels deep, that
> just sounds like far too much work to do manually.
>
> Can anyone point me to instructions on how to create a
> script to automate the task, or better yet, how to get
> Evolution itself to handle the migration on its own?

First of all: Always have the old account as a backup around. Copy your
data, do not move it. Paranoia saves your day.


Evolution 1.4 stores data (like Mail, Address Books, etc) in ~/evolution
and the settings (Accounts and stuff) in ~/.gconf/apps/evolution using
GConf. Since Evo 2.0 the location for the data changed to the hidden
~/.evolution dir (note the dot).

Evolution will migrate your old data for you, if you do have it in your
(new) $HOME.


I assume, you started Evolution 2.4 already (on your personal user
account) but did *not* retrieve or modify any data, like fetching mails.

* On your new account run this command in a terminal to shut down Evo
  backend tasks (especially e-d-s)

  $ evolution --force-shutdown

  and remove the (unnecessary, new) ~/.evolution dir. Remember, you did
  not get new data in there, now did you?

* Then shut down the GConf daemon on the new account, using the
  following command. You'll need to do this on the old account, if (and
  only if) it currently is running.

  $ gconftool-2 --shutdown

* Now copy over your old settings and data (recursively). Again, the
  settings are in ~/.gconf/apps/evolution and the data is in the
  ~/evolution dir. The latter should not exist on the new account, the
  first one can be overwritten.

* Then run Evolution 2.4 and it should migrate your 1.4.x data.
  Migration may take a while. Lean back and have a good cup of coffee,
  beer, whatever... :-)


After that, your Evo data is in the (hidden) ~/.evolution dir. Evo will
ask you if it should remove the old dir.


Now that I'm done with this mail, I found a previous post that should
explain everything already. Yeah, right...
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-list/2004-November/msg00399.html


Note: You would have no problem whatsoever and probably wouldn't even
have noticed anything, if you would have copied over your entire old
$HOME before logging in as that user the first time...

...guenther


-- 
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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; }}}