Re: [Evolution] Big problems with evo

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 12:19 +0000, Svante R Signell wrote:
> From: evolution-list-bounces gnome org [evolution-list-bounces gnome org] on behalf of Pete Biggs [pete 
> biggs org uk]
> Sent: 22 March 2011 10:29
> To: evolution-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] Big problems with evo
> > > > I'll try to upgrade again. Can I safely remove the directory
> > > > .local/share/evolution/ before doing that, or is it as important as
> > > > ,evolution?
> > > Please, does anybody know the importance of the .local/share/evolution
> > > files compared to .evolution? Can I safely remove that directory before
> > > upgrading to 2.32.2-1
> > Evo data is stored in .evolution prior to 2.30 - after that it is stored
> > in .local/share/evolution and .evolution is not used and should have
> > been deleted by the upgrade process.

+1

> When upgrading we should have been informed about this!!!

The user is, and upgrade dialog appears [at least I recall one; maybe
Ubuntu in their infinite user-experience wisdom disable it?]  It has
also been mentioned here over-and-over-and-over.

>  Especially when my .evolution is on AFS and .local is not.
> Additionally, evolution (more or less) freezes when the AFS ticket
> expires, and no wen mails are received in a long time after .evolution
> is made available again.  In my opinion it should not.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for the application to assume the
underlying file-system is consistently available.  

I can tell you the amazing horrors that happen when you have VMs hosted
on an inconsistent filesystem [on $50,000 hardware :)].  It all turns to
poo.

> > If you are currently on 2.32.x and upgrading, then
> > removing .local/share/evolution will delete all your data.
> > If you aborted your previous upgrade half way through, then depending on
> > whether it had started deleting the contents of .evolution or not you
> > may or may not have everything there.
> Looks like it was trying to upgrade and suddenly .evolution was no longer available.
> I think most of the local folders are still there. However, the IMAP
> folder is downloaded again and again. Is there any way to change the
> erroneous setting somewhere? Does
> removing .local/share/evolution/mail/imap/my_mail_account/* help
> (creating everything again)? Or are there some .gconf setting causing
> the problems?

Start evolution as evolution --offline, delete the IMAP account, and
recreate it.  I've had to do that when *I* dorked evolution up by
fiddling around.  The account configuration is in gconf, so just
deleting stuff beneath the folder is not sufficient.

> > If you have a backup of your original .evolution that you had on the AFS
> > mounted filesystem, then probably the only way you can get a clean
> > upgrade is to restore it, then copy it to your local disk and take AFS
> > out of the picture during the upgrade.  You will obviously have to
> > remove .local/share/evolution otherwise nothing will be upgraded (since
> > Evo thinks it has already done the file upgrade process) - I don't know
> > if there is a gconf key that also prevents multiple upgrades.
> I did remove .local/share/evolution before starting the upgrades evo
> (2.32.2-1). Same problem with IMAP folder downloading as above.