Evolution does not recognise configuration from an older installation

[Martin Konôpka]

Binary package hint: evolution

I was reinstalling my workstation ("machine A") where I had been using ubuntu 9.04 (64-bit) and Evolution as a mail client with locally stored files. To prevent loss of my files (including emails) I copied the entire directory

/home/konopka/.evolution

onto other machine ("B"). I similarly copied also the entire directory

/home/konopka/.gconf/apps/evolution

onto the corresponding path on the machine B.

Then I was normally able to use Evolution on machine B, without any need to configure my email account. In the meantime I formatted the entire disk of machine A and installed ubuntu 10.04 (lucid), 64-bit version on it.

Finally I copied back the entire /home/konopka/.evolution and /home/konopka/.gconf/apps/evolution directories from machine B to machine A.

Then I started Evolution on the freshly installed machine A but it was unable to recognise the existing and fully configured email account. It was simply trying to create a new configuration and I am almost sure that __it would delete__ my existing stored emails (on machine A) !

To complete my report, the machine B has a LinuxMint Helena 64-bit installed on it (it is based on ubuntu 9.10).

And I add that I (user konopka) am member of the users group (I deleted the default group konopka) on machine A. I carefully checked to ensure that every my file and directory has correct ownership:

$ cd /home
$ sudo chown -R konopka:users konopka

Each of my direcory has permission at least
drwx------
and each file within relevant directories has permission at least
-rw-------

To prevent any doubt about the data transfers between machines A and B, I must say I used rsync -avz command.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: evolution 2.28.3-0ubuntu10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-24.39-generic 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Aug 12 15:46:31 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

why you didn't backup evolution with the tools it provides to do that?

[Martin Konôpka (martin.konopka)]

Hmm, I did not know that Evolution provides such tools. And I did not expect that I might run into problems when transfering the directories in the way I described.

You know - one could use several workstations sharing the same home directory on an NFS server via LDAP. The workstations could slightly differ in OS and Evolution versions but it should be possible to run Evolution smoothly on either of such workstations (not at the same time). This is not my situation (I have local storages on the machines A and B) but it does have something common with it, at least in my view.

But anyway thank you for notifying me about the tools provided with Evolution. I will be using them in future.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for evolution (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]