GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 548596
Evolution setup should be stored in .evolution for easy move/restore
Last modified: 2012-06-04 12:39:18 UTC
Hi, if there is the need to move evolution data (mail, accounts, addressbooks, calendars, tasks and notes) from an old home to a new one, just moving the .evolution should be enough. I tried the procedure: - backing up ~/.evolution ~/.gconf/apps/evolution ~/.gnome2_private/Evolution and then restoring, but it did not work well (even if I followed some howtos I found on the Internet). It could be easier if evolution itself stored that settings under the ~/.evolution or, if they cannot be moved from where they are, there should be a restorable copy in the ~/.evolution itself. Since when you move the ~/.evolution to a clean new home at the first run of the program the configuration wizard gets automatically started, you could include an option there saying: "Hey! I just have the settings already, get them from the auto-backup!" to let the user restore all the settings under .gconf/anywhere_they're_needed. During the last three or four changes of distribution or upgrades I made, all the times I started with a clean home and restored backups of the settings/data I strictly needed. Evolution is the only program which has no straightforward way of doing this (i.e. it's not enough to just restore the .evolution dir), in the end I restored calendars re-importing them from the same .evolution, re-configured accounts (and signatures) by hand, re-imported addressbooks by converting them to vcard first... it should really be simpler than this. Thanks, bye.
We have backup and restore functionality to automate this procedure now. "File -> Backup Settings..." to generate an evolution-backup.tar.gz file. Then on your freshly installed machine the first-time configuration wizard will ask if you want to restore from a backup.
Hi, I tried the "Backup Settings..." procedure but it produced a 920MB file... what does it exactly backup? It sounds a bit strange to me: [giacomo@ragnarok:~/.evolution]$ du -sh * 436K addressbook 72K backup-restore-gconf.xml 1.6M cache 440K calendar 4.0K camel-cert.db 4.0K categories.xml 68K cert8.db 340K exchange 16K key3.db 2.4G mail 52K memos 16K secmod.db 16K signatures 52K tasks Does it include some content from the mail directory? Mail and mail filters get restored when you put the .evolution inside the new home, so probably there is no need to backup them. Anyway, if anyone has only got an rsync-backup of his previous home, he/she must restore the old home, start evolution, use the "Backup Settings..." procedure, and then go and restore everything inside the new home. Otherwise, one should use "Backup Settings..." everyday before saving his/her home somewhere to make sure he/she's got the right backup when he/she needs it, but this does not allow for incremental backups (everyday you have to re-build the evolution-backup.tar.gz) - and imagine what would happen if you have to do something similar for every program you use. Then again, after I created the backup file I need one more GB of space to store it, since it's redundant data. Since every time I needed to restore my full home from my backup everything worked just as it never had been moved, I suppose that all settings are stored inside my home. Then, since the settings inside .gconf and .gnome2_private are very little, is it really a problem to have an automatic backup of them all under the .evolution? (I'm just really asking; I suppose so, indeed, so you would probably have done it already) It's redundant data - ad I said before - but it's a matter of a few kB. Thanks, cheers.
I prefer not to have to do per-application backup procedures. It would be really convenient if I could just copy/rsync/tar ONE directory and get a full snapshot of my Evolution data - or two directories if Evo ever starts using XDG_CONFIG and XDG_DATA to separate those two. Is ~/.gnome2_private still used by Evolution (or anyone, for that matter)? The directory is empty for me. I was under the impression it stopped being used when Evolution started using gnome-keyring. What app is re-creating this directory for me? Who uses it? Most important, who do I file a bug against? I don't think it's important to back that directory up anymore. Is that correct? Didn't it just contain saved password hashes in the past? Bug 238667 and bug 300940 are both about saving some configuration info gconf. I agree that's a bad idea. How high of a priority is it for the Evolution maintainers to fix that? Should we file distinct bugs for each bit of data stored there, or are the two current ones enough? I would really appreciate it if Evolution could contain itself to just a single directory.
Also see bug 300940
The account-mgmt branch will address this. I'm hoping to finish it for Evolution 3.6.
This is fixed now by the account-mgmt branch merge for Evolution 3.5.3. Account data is now stored as plain-text files in $HOME/.config/evolution/sources. More details: http://mbarnes.livejournal.com/4631.html
*** Bug 632005 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***