Re: [Evolution] Upgrade from RH8,evo1.0.8

["R. Steven Rainwater" <srainwater ncc com>]

Hi Barry,

On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 18:28 -0600, Barry wrote:
> Digging deep here, I noted some November '07 info from Steven Rainwater
> and Patrick O'Callaghan in November, upgrading from 1.4.6 to 2.12.1,
> all in Redhat format;

Yes, finally got it done. Sadly, there's no built-in way of upgrading
from previous versions, which makes me a little nervous about the
future. My solution was a bit clunky but it worked for me. After using
the new setup for a couple of months, my conclusion is that Evolution
1.4.x was a pretty good email program with one big exception, it was
very slow. Evolution 2.x is very fast, which is nice, but a lot of the
features I used in 1.4 have been removed, while most of the annoyances
of 1.4 have been preserved and multiplied. If I had the time, I'd be
tempted to grab the 1.4 source and start a new email program.

> my project attempt is from RH8, version 1.0.8 to the latest
> in Ubuntu.  I think I'm into something over my head.  I don't know what
> Maildir is, nor mh nor mbox.

Those are three different formats for storing mail locally. Maildir
stores each email as an individual file. Mbox stores all the email for a
given folder as one file, which tends to make moving and deleting emails
slower. Also, if one mbox file is lost or corrupted, you've lost an
entire folder of email vs losing a single email with Maildir format, so
it's a bit less secure in that sense. I have no experience with mh, so I
can't comment on how it stacks up to the other two formats.

I'm not sure about Evolution 1.0.8 but in 1.4.x, you can right click on
one of your mail folders and select "properties". There will be a drop
down that shows whether the folder is stored in maildir, mh, or mbox
format. By default, all your folders will be in the same format but it
was possible to set each individually if you had the need.

In Evolution 2.x, only mbox is supported as a local storage format.
Support for mh and maildir as local storage formats was removed. Support
for Maildir as a remote server storage format was added but uses a
different file/directory layout that makes it incompatible with the
1.4.x local Maildir format. See my previous posts for the kluge I came
up with to (sort of) allow local maildir support.

> I have tons of mail I don't want to lose.  Would I be ahead to set up
> a local SMTP server, and mail myself stuff from box A to box B?  Or
> is there something easy here? My setup in 1.0.8 is strictly defaults,
> whatever they are.

If you have a lot of email, manually sending it to the new account would
probably be a pain. I'd suggest figuring out the local storage format
(probably mbox?) and manually moving the files one folder at a time. If
it's mbox, there's only one file per mail folder that you'll need to
find and move. If it turns out you're using maildir format, things will
be a lot more complicated. There were significant changes in the storage
format for maildir including a different method of handling sub folders,
so you'll have to modify your maildir store quite a bit to get it
working. I have no experience at all with migrating mh format, so I
can't even venture a guess as to what problems await you along that
path. 

Good luck, though, and if you get it migrated, post something here about
how you did it.

If anyone out there is looking for a useful free software project, how
about building a universal email store translator? Something that would
turn what you've got into what you want: Evolution 1.0.8 mail store into
Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 format, or an Outlook Express 4.01 mail store into
an Evolution 2.12.2 format. Now that would be a useful tool!

-Steve