Re: [Evolution] Unable to launch Evolution from a cron job

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Wed, 2021-03-17 at 15:56 -0500, Darrell Barabash wrote:
> I've exhausted what I can find on the web and am looking for some
> guidance. I'm running Evolution 3.36.4 on a MINT 20.1 system. I am
> trying to perform nightly backups by running the "evolution-backup"
> utility in a script called by cron. 
>
> When this script is run from command line (as my normal user),
> everything works great and evolution restarts after the backup.
>
> However, when run from cron (as my normal user, not root), I can see
> that the evolution shutdown works great and that the file backup also
> works. But, Evolution does not restart again irrespective of whether
> the --restart option is used or not.

Don't do that. Evolution is not designed to be run as a batch job. It
expects to have a DISPLAY, which a cron job will not have. This is just
not going to work.

The wider problem is that (once again) we have to reiterate that
evolution-backup, contrary to its name, *is not for taking periodic
backups of Evolution data*. Its purpose is to help when moving accounts
to a new machine, and it's designed to be run from the GUI (or at least
from a user terminal). If you need to take a backup of Evolution, just
use your normal user account backup system. Everything you need is
already in your user account. That's all you have to do.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: Evolution backup really
needs to be called something else.

poc