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

[larry <lar3ry sasktel net>]

On Mon, 2021-10-18 at 12:24 +0200, Milan Crha via evolution-list wrote:
> 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.
> 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?

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.

It also appears that --offline and --online are only for starting
Evolution. Just tried 'evolution --offline' and got:

(evolution:247144): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: 09:40:12.295: Your application
did not unregister from D-Bus before destruction. Consider using
g_application_run().

> 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.

Right.

> 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.

I don't leave email on the server. I am running POP, not IMAP (if that
matters).

>  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

OK... but if I am not backing up Evolution with the built-in backup,
that won't happen. Right?

> 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.

I am using tar.gz, and get no console output, presumably because I run
it with cron. Currently, my backup generates a 500MiB or so file, and
takes a little over 6 minutes. That's backing up .local/share/evolution

I will soon be modifying my script to back up only
.local/share/evolution/mail
and
.local/share/evolution/addressbook

> 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

That's an interesting list.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I need .cache, and I think
the various .config directories can be easily regenerated by deleting
them all and restarting Evolution.

Thanks for the help.

Larry