Email backup in kmail is a pest, I really whish someone would come up with something similar to MS windoze's pst file. On Wednesday 28 September 2005 15:24, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Shriramana Sharma [09-28-05 05:41]: ....

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Now I have backed up all my software archives (entire KDE 3.42 etc) to Windows, and only thing that remains is my mail. Where do I find it for backing up? http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdepim/kmail/faq.html#id2605128 told me to look under ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/. What I see is this:

~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/

<DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 11 KB gmail <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 1 KB inbox <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 30 KB linux <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 1 KB trash <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 1 KB drafts <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 1 KB sent-mail <DIR> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:45 1 KB outbox

Your mail will be beneath these folders. ie: using gmail as an example

gmail/cur/ new/ tmp/

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Somehow these file sizes don't look right.

sizes are for *that* directory only, not those beneath.

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I see a lock file in the ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail folder. Perhaps kmail didn't shut down properly?

that is correct. But since you do not have kmail running and have moved the files, the lock is no good. Delete it.

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Do I have to recover the mail from elsewhere?

no.

-- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2

-- Kind regards Per Qvindesland E-mail: per@qvtech.cc Web: www.qvtech.cc Tel: +27 39 682 5453 Cell: +27 82 777 1362 Success defies gravity - it goes straight to the head. Gravity take over when the head becomes heavy with Success!

On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 15:29 +0200, Per Qvindesland wrote:

Email backup in kmail is a pest, I really whish someone would come up with something similar to MS windoze's pst file.

and suffer from it's obscurity? The average Joe does not even know where it resides in the Windows file hierarchy. Kmail stores all the files in the user's home dir viz. ~/Mail. Just as you need to know that you have to back up .pst file for Outlook/Outlook Exp. so do you need to know the dir you need to back up for your email application in Linux/*nix. -- Arun Khan

Shriramana Sharma wrote:

On 9/29/05, Arun K. Khan wrote:

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you need to know that you have to back up .pst file for Outlook/Outlook Exp. so do you need to know the dir you need to back up for your email application in Linux/*nix.

With the difference between that when you have set up /home on a different partition, you can close your eyes and backup that partition to another drive, trusting that all your stuff is backed up, PROVIDED KMail doesn't mess up things like it did for me.

when you do the backup, you can as well backup /home, whereever it is located. problem is not all is saved in /home... for example plugins for mozilla/thunderbird, config in /etc and even sometimes in /usr/X11/etc... jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

* Shriramana Sharma [09-28-05 18:46]:

On 9/28/05, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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Your mail will be beneath these folders. ie: using gmail as an example

gmail/cur/ new/ tmp/

gmail/cur contains one file of size 8121 bytes and another of 3436 bytes. gmail/new and gmail/tmp are empty.

But there are *other* folders that will *also* have mail, inbox, linux! Apparently, that's all that you recovered.

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I see a lock file in the ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail folder. Perhaps kmail didn't shut down properly?

that is correct. But since you do not have kmail running and have moved the files, the lock is no good. Delete it.

Read-only access to the lost partition.

YOU are the sys-admin. Change the access. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2

Had another thought. I backed up my /home partition using Konqueror. I do not remember whether as root or my own user. I also don't remember whether KMail was running at that time or not. But: If KMail had been running, would that have prevented the mail files from being copied? In Windows, when a particular file is in use, I am prevented from deleting it but not from copying it. I wonder how Linux works in this matter. Can anyone please run KMail and while running it try to copy their mail folder to another partition and tell me whether all their mail files get transferred?