From: Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>
Subject: Re: [Evolution] Evo mail: explanation of old and new file system
To: evolution-list gnome org
Date: Thursday, 7 June, 2012, 17:01
So this is why I need to have an explanation of the
file structure and
file types: when I look in
/home/eric/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/
I see a strange mixture of the "old" mbox type files
and,
under /home/eric/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/cur,
a zillion
entries that look like
'1339022703.13737_7755.localhost.localdomain:2,ST'.
This is all very confusing. I want to know what's
happening and how I
should go about moving the missing mail from my old
backups to the new
situation. What are these
'1339022703.13737_7755.localhost.localdomain:2,ST'
files?
They are maildir message files
How do they relate to the mbox-type files?
mbox has all the messages from a single folder in a
monolithic file.
Maildir has all the messages from a single folder in a
directory, one
message per file. The folder name is the name of the
directory with
subfolder component names separated by a '.'
Do I just copy the
missing mbox files to the new location and just let Evo
do the
conversion?
No. They are different file formats - it's like
copying a zip file
containing lots of word documents into your ~/Documents
folder and
expecting LibreOffice to be able to read them.
Do I need to copy all six of the old .evolution files
for
each of the mailbox folders (that is, the sample set I
listed in my
initial email in this thread)?
As I asked there:
"So assuming I can find those old emails in
~/.evolution on one of my
old backups, what's the procedure for moving them to
the new format? Do
I just copy everything from the old to the new?
E.g.
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld.cmeta
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld.ibex.index
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld.ev-summary
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld.ev-summary-meta
.evolution/mail/local/xLynnOld.ibex.index.data
to
.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.xLynnOld
?"
No. I understand what you say about trying to fix
problems, but if you
don't know what you are doing, then you should definitely
not play
around with the files in Evolution's (or anything else's)
hidden private
folders. At best it will not work, at worst you will
loose more stuff.
It's all well and good to say, "There isn't in the user
docs because
it's nothing that a user should need to care about. It
should be all
automatically." But the user does need to care
about it since he has to
fix the problem. And he has to understand what's
happening.
If you look in the FAQs or in the Help documentation it DOES
tell you
where Evolution holds all its data. It may not give
chapter and verse
about the old and new locations because it's not something
that 99.999%
of the time people need to know (or care) about - it's also
a futile
task because the locations, and the data stored in them,
change
continually with each release as the application is
improved. Such is
the nature of an evolving Evolution. Personally I do
not want the
developers to be hampered in their goals by having to keep
the backend
store consistent from one release to the next - so long as
there are
efficient, working, upgrade mechanisms, then I don't care.
So, anyway, to sort out your problem.
If you have an mbox file full of mail you want to get access
to within
Evo, then
1. Make a back up copy of the file.
2. Create a new "account" Edit -> Preferences -> Mail
Accounts -> Add
3. Fill in some real or dummy info for the email address
4. Select Server Type of "Standard Unix mbox spool file"
5. Point the File: dialogue to the mbox file
6. close etc. filling in things as necessary
You will now have another account in the folder list, the
"Inbox" of
that account will contain all the mail messages in that mbox
file.
Do not be tempted to just leave that account and use the
mbox file as a
normal mail folder. In Evolution, copy the messages
out of the mbox
folder to your local mail folders (or wherever you want them
to be).
After all the files have been copied, go back in to
Edit->Preferences
and delete the account you created.
Repeat for all the mbox files containing things missing in
your current
setup.
So, you see, no need to fiddle with internal Evolution
files, no
knowledge needed of how Evo stores things. Just an
application of the
standard facilities provided by Evolution.
P.
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