Re: [Evolution] Take Evolution offline from a bash script?

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Fri, 2021-10-15 at 15:37 -0600, larry wrote:
> I want to back up Evolution mail using a cron job.
> I want to use tar, but I would prefer that files in the evolution/mail
> don't change while it's happening.

        Hi,
I guess you foresee a manual backup, not to use the backup utility
provided by the Evolution itself, hidden under the File->Backup/Restore
Evolution settings menu options, right?

> Is there any way to take it offline, then back online from a bash
> script?

The offline more works only for the Mail part. All the other parts are
not touched.

The `evolution --quit` is there to quit the application, if it's
running. This doesn't cover the background processes, it's only for the
Evolution itself. You probably noticed it when checking either the man
page or the `evolution --help` page.

Back to the provided backup/restore utility, even it's not meant to be
used as a daily backup tool, it's there to make it easier to move
settings between machines (it also doesn't store the files in the
~/.cache/, because those are meant to be local copies of the server
data, thus can be reloaded on the new machine from the server), then it
can be used as well. The main advantage is that it takes care of all
the steps with the background processes, if possible (it cannot catch a
state when some other process starts the background processes while the
backup/restore is ongoing). See:

   $ /usr/libexec/evolution/evolution-backup --help

An example call to backup can be:

   $ /usr/libexec/evolution/evolution-backup --backup /mnt/backup/evo-backup-X.tar.gz

The extension of the target file can also be .tar.xz, which does better
compression than the .tar.gz, but it takes longer. The backup prints on
the console what it does.

If you still want to use manual backup, then I suppose you know what to
save. Just in case, it's written here:
https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/data-storage.html

        Bye,
        Milan