Restoring Evolution without tar.gz backup file

[Doug Hutcheson]

My old laptop fried itself. I was unable to use the Evolution built-in backup/restore because my system was fried. I have an rsync backup of everything and I have restored ~/.local/share/evolution. Following a thread I found by Googling, I also restored .gconf/apps/evolution.

When I start Evolution, it takes me through the initial setup wizard and does not seem to recognise that all my files are present.

How can I get Evolution to recognise and accept all my existing mail, account settings etc. from my rsync backup?

[cazo]

I think I also had to restore ~/.config/evolution and ~/.cache/evolution to take care of that.

[Doug Hutcheson]

restore ~/.config/evolution and ~/.cache/evolution

Thanks cazo. I tried that, but still get the initial wizard instead of the application with my data.

My old, dead box was called Cardraeh and I have restored my Cardraeh home directory under a folder 'Cardraeh' in my new home directory. I seem to have copied all the files I can find from the old to the new:

[doug@localhost ~]$ find . -iname evolution
./.gconf/apps/evolution
./.gnome2/accels/evolution
./.local/share/evolution
./.cache/evolution
./.config/evolution
./Cardraeh/.gconf/apps/evolution
./Cardraeh/.cache/evolution
./Cardraeh/.gnome2/accels/evolution
./Cardraeh/.config/evolution
./Cardraeh/.local/share/evolution

I had to create the directory .gnome2 and its accels, then pasted the evolution file into it.

I still cannot get Evolution up with my data and I am assuming there is another configuration file somewhere that I am unaware of. Any suggestions?

[Doug Hutcheson]

I shut down last night and planned to solve the problem this morning. When I booted this morning, Evolution came up with all my mail, account settings, contacts etc. It seems that copying all the relevant files is not enough: a reboot is required.

Thanks for helping, cazo - I'm sure the files you pointed me to were part of the puzzle.

[libertyhawk]

I was able to restore my email and settings by first creating an archive:

tar cvf mail.tar .cache/evolution .local/share/evolution .config/evolution

and then restoring the archive to the new machine for the same user:

tar xvf mail.tar

And I did not need to restart the machine either.