[Evolution] Restoring Sent Folder (was: Re: Evolution-list Digest, Vol 56, Issue 31)

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2010-03-19 at 07:50 -0500, Barbara Tobias wrote: 
> On Thu, 2010-03-18 at 14:00 -0500, Barbara Tobias wrote:
>         > Almost all of the items in my "sent" folder have suddenly
>         disappeared.
>         > I have recent backups but do not know how to restore only that
>         one
>         > folder.  Can someone point me in the right direction?  Thanks!
> On Thu, 2010-03-18 at 3:08 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>         1) Is your Sent folder local or remote?
>         2) If local, does the actual file still contain messages?
>         3) How do you do your backups?
>         
>         poc
>         
> 1) My sent folder is local.
> 2) Yes; there are 4 from 2009, 1 from March 3, and 2 from yesterday,
> although I sent quite a few more than that yesterday and probably send
> out from 6 to a dozen daily.
> 3) Select File > Backup Settings > evolution-backup.tar.gz and then copy
> that file to an external disk.

Looks like something damaged the Sent mbox file (I'm assuming you looked
at the actual file using less or vi or similar). If so, I would do
something like this (but I'm just making it up as I go along :-):

1) Create a temporary folder within Evo, let's call it Sent-Temp
2) Visit your Sent folder and copy everything to Sent-Temp
3) Stop Evo (--force-shutdown)
4) rm ~/.evolution/mail/local/Sent*
5) tar xvf evolution-backup.tar.gz .evolution/mail/local/Sent
6) Start Evo and visit the Sent folder. This will reconstruct indices
etc.
7) If all is well, move the contents of Sent-Temp back into Sent and
delete the temporary folder.
8) On the contrary, you can back out by removing Sent and renaming
Sent-Temp to Sent, in which case you need to think again.

poc

PS Why did you reply to a digest? This is never the right thing to do as
it messes up the list threading. Also the message Subject tells us
nothing about the real topic (I changed it for this reply but that
doesn't correct the problem). You are clearly subscribed to the list so
there's no reason to do this.