I am sure a similar question would have been asked in the past, but although I spent a couple of hours looking for the answer, I did not succeed to find the answer. Hence this question:

In order to change distros, I am in the process of backing up my Evolution files. When pasting the "mail" and "address book" I get an error message that says: Error "invalid parameters while copying....". The files relate to ".xml" and in 'mail>views' they relate to custom views.
My options on the question Continue? are Skip, Cancel and Retry. In the end, my only option is Cancel, but that does not give me the chance to back the files up.

Why is that so and what can I do about it?

what command did you use to copy those files? care to paste the entire syntax you typed before getting that error?

I did not use any command! What I did is, I highlighted the folders under ".evolution" (using Edit>Copy and then "Paste into Folder" where I wanted to paste it in an external drive). My knowledge of commands in the terminal is zero.

well maybe you should study the command line. . that is an essential part for linux users.

review the command "cp" type man cp on your terminal

know the name of your drive and the specific files to be copied

I would hesitate a guess that the files are in use or similar. Did you have Evolution running at the time?

To ic_torres: I typed "cp --help". I got a lot of text, but it was not understandable. However I tried "cp file-of drive1-folder-name dest name-of-drive/folder-name" and I made sure I had the names of the drive, folder, etc correct and I got: target `drive-name/folder-name' is not a directory. So it seems to have recognised the folder to copied, but it did not paste them in the drive/folder, although the names were typed correctly.

To billymayday: I closed down Evolution and tried to copy and paste as previously, but I got the same result!

I am disappointed that there has not been a response on my problem. Does that mean that there is a bug or a flaw? Or did I misunderstand the replies I was given?

Well ... let's say if you used the actual names of files and devices
people may have a chance to understand what you're doing.

There's no concept of a "drive name" under Linux to begin with, so
following your cp syntax is problematic to say the least.



Cheers,
Tink

Ok, I thought that it was fairly clear, but what I think and what is the right thing are not the same, fair enough. So, this is what I tried:

cp home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution dest Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files

in which Jenni_and_Adri is a folder of the "/" directory of which "home" is a folder of "/" and .evolution are the files and folders I want to back up. The Destination is the drive, which was originally a backup drive, called Backup. The folder in which I want to back up the .evolution folder in the Backup drive is called Backup-Fedora-Files, as shown in the Terminal:

[Jenni_and_Adri@localhost ~]$ cp home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution dest Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files
cp: target `Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files' is not a directory
[Jenni_and_Adri@localhost ~]$

I have just rechecked the name of the Drive and the name of the target folder and they are correctly reproduced.

Thank you for your patience.

The message is pretty clear - Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files doesn't exist. Note that this would be interpreted as current_directory/Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files, so if you actually meant /Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files, you need the leading "/".

What is "dest" doing in the middle of you cp line?

i think you might be having path issues. what is the mount point for your backup drive? your pasted command looks like you are copying a file called .evolution and a file called dest into Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files. you also need the -R recursive flag to copy the .evolution directory and its contents to your backup drive. first issue, though, is the mountpoint for your backup drive. unless your backup drive is mounted in the same directory that your .evolution directory resides, you'll need to give the path to Backup. also, you need a "/" in front of home, unless you are sitting in the root directory.

cheers.

After reading this post and some experimenting I got:

[Jenni_and_Adri@localhost ~]$ cp /home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution /Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files
and got
cp: omitting directory `/home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution'

I have omitted a directory, how?

Then I tried:

[Jenni_and_Adri@localhost ~]$ cp /home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution-R /Backup/Backup-Fedora-Files
this time I got
cp: cannot stat `/home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution-R': No such file or directory

So am I not correctly using the -R recursive flag? (what is that?)

Then there is the question of the mount point. If I understand it (Wikipedia) the mount point is the "/" directory, is that right?

I am sorry about these basic questions, but "Moving to Ubuntu Linux" does not give me the answers. Is there a book that tells me about the basics of Linux commands?

In relation to the use of "dest" in my earlier post, from "cp --help" I thought I understood that dest was an instruction where what is the destination ("dest") of the copied files. But come to think of it, about 20 years ago there were similar commands in MSDOS and you didn't do that either.

cp -R /home/Jenni_and_Adri/.evolution /Backup/Backup-Fedora-File

if you know a command and does not know how to use it always refer to

man commandyoutwanttoknow

Here's a very good Linux tutorial: http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
Live it, breathe it