Re: [Evolution] Newbie-questions

[Ralf Mardorf <silver bullet zoho com>]

On Mon, 2016-10-24 at 10:17 -0700, Zan Lynx wrote:
> If Evolution hasn't yet, just sit down and document all of the file
> locations and DConf / GSettings keys.

As already pointed out, push F1 and Ctrl+F, then search for "back" and
you'll get

"Back up and restore"

It mentions that you anyway need to backup bogofilter and spamassasin
directories separately, which make sense, since they are shared by
several apps. I for example use bogofilter with Claws and Evolution.

On the bottom there is a link to

"Data storage locations
This is only interesting for advanced users who want to debug problems.
Evolution 3.6 and later stores its data according to the XDG Base
Directory Specification. By default this means:
The user's data files
$HOME/.local/share/evolution
Various configuration and state files
$HOME/.config/evolution
Account settings
$HOME/.config/evolution/sources
Disposable data caches
$HOME/.cache/evolution
Configuration settings in GSettings
$HOME/.config/dconf"

A backup of .cache isn't needed.

I'm neither a fan of dconf, nor do I use gesettings, but it has got a
help option and a man page, if you really want to 'get' the values.

[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ gsettings list-schemas | grep evolution
org.gnome.evolution.shell
org.gnome.evolution.plugin.face-picture
[snip]
org.gnome.evolution.mail
[snip]
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ gsettings list-keys org.gnome.evolution.mail
composer-magic-smileys
composer-use-outbox
[snip]
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.evolution.mail
composer-magic-smileys
false

My backup strategy is to backup /home completely, using cp -pr or cp -a,
resp. tar or tar -xattrs. I don't know if attributes are really
important, restoring from backups that didn't care for attributes never
caused an issue for me. Since I'm using a rolling release I don't have
to mess about distro releases. You could use rsync or what ever else,
but IMO it makes sense to copy the complete home directory.

Regards,
Ralf