Yesterday.. I was searching for a bakcup command in the kmail mail client... So.. do u know how i can backup my email using kmail... and then import them again?? I must do the above due to a format procedure which must take place...Thx a lot

KMail doesn't have that kind of feature.

But you can easily backup the relevant files
and it will work just dandy after a restore.

backup:
After the format and with the new user account already
created, logged in as that user:

restore:
If the user happens to have a different numerical
user-id after the re-install you'll need to do this
as root:

Cheers,
Tink

thx for your answer....Are u sure that is going to work properly? Have u ever tried it?

Repeatedly - OK, only twice :}

You could always try whether it works by doing
the taring and creating a NEW user on your machine,
and untar into his directory and see whether it
works for you. Maybe disconnect from the net
on first run so it doesn't download mails in the
wrong users directory accidentally.


Cheers,
Tink

thx a lot.... Have a nice day

I have a similar situation as the original writer, but my emails are encrypted. As I remember it, I never created an encryption key, I just ticked a box saying something about encrypting the messages stored on the computer. The only passwords I ever type is for fetching new emails from the mailservers. How do I make sure I can read them after restoring the backup?

Thanks

I hate to say this, but you might nearly be in big, big trouble.

The only way to be sure you can restore from a "backup" is to try it.

My original backup strategies were bad, but I didn't realise this.
One day I was bored and thought I'd test my strategy. It (eventually) worked, but was a PITA. My backup strategy is better now:

- Backup all of /home however you like (as files with rsync, as a tarball, whatever). Do this to an external device that can be completely disconnected from your PC Eg a USB / Firewire HDD.

- Do this regularly, depending on how much you'd not care losing.

- Now and again, as root, unmount /home or mount an empty but formatted partition on top of /home and then see if you can restore it from your backup. It is best to disconnect the internet whilst you are doing this, as otherwise emails may arrive, and end up in the "wrong" place.

- I occasionally backup my OS, but usually only before I attempt something very adventurous - the OS (linux) is easily restored, probably to a more up to date distro, but the most important backup is your personal data. That cannot be re-installed.

Let's face it: if you had a catastrophic failure, regaining internet connectivity would be your last thought. First would be "Where are my personal files?"

Thank you, I'll try that (but it will have to wait a while)

Kmail seems to encrypt regardless I don't recall any tick box. It doesn't like not using Kwallet if installed. Which might be part of encryption. I don't think that restoring to different user will work, I changed disto/user and the earlier emails are not openable.
It was some time ago and cannot recall exactly what happened.

I have a query Kmail "compacts" --compresses? emails how does that affect the backup/restore.

Is there any way of stoping it "compacting"? Can any program "uncompact" and save as plain text.

For instance you get message "sucessfully compacted inbox" -- inbox might have 2 short emails in it. Why bother.

I found a quite simple way to save the emails as plain text: click a folder, select (all) messages, right click and select "Save as..". As default it is saved as an .mbox-file, and reading it in a textfile-viewer worked fine (except for the swedish characters, but I guess that can be fixed with character encoding).