Re: [Evolution] Restoring addressbook after doing a 3.8.4->3.11.3->3.8.4 'cross-grade'

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Fri, 2014-01-10 at 11:37 -0500, John Affleck wrote:
> For various reasons, I recently upgraded (on ubuntu 13.10, which I guess
> explains some of the reasons) from the 'stock' 3.8.4 to 3.11.3 and then
> back to 3.8.4. Everything worked out fine, except I now have lost access
> to my address books:
>
> This address book cannot be opened.  Please check that the path
> /home/jafflec/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system-address-book
> exists and that permissions are set to access it.
>
> Detailed error message: Unable to connect to 'Personal': Error
> introspecting unknown summary field 'file_as_localized'
>
> ..which makes me a little sad. Is there a way to 'recover' from that ?
> I don't mind performing somewhat random sqlite3 operations on
> contacts.db, but I don't see anything that looks like file_as_localized.

        Hi,
I see that column (and other ..._localized columns) in contacts.db in
~/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system/contacts.db
in the "folder_id" table, but, before you start playing with it too
much, I suggest to reinstall the 3.11.3 again, then go to Contacts view,
right click the On This Computer/Personal address book and choose "Save
as vCard" (you can do the similar when you select all contacts and
choose "Save as vCard" from a context menu above the selection). That
will create a backup of your addressbook, which you can import
(File->Import->Single file...) in any version [1]. You will need also
cleanup these data folders (~/.local/share/evolution,
~/.cache/evolution, ~/.config/evolution) and reconfigure evolution from
scratch, just to make sure no "too new data formats" are stored in them
(that also means to backup your locally stored emails (from On This
Computer), thus basically do not delete the files/folders, but move them
elsewhere, with all evolution processes being stopped).

The problem you see is that the underlying database was migrated to
newer format, which the old evolution-data-server doesn't understand.
Evolution doesn't support downgrading, at least between versions which
involve such changes.
        Bye,
        Milan

[1] Another option is to concatenate values of "vcard" column of
"folder_id" table into one long file, which may produce quite the same
result as the "Save as vCard" function, and then import the concatenated
file after local data being moved away.