Evolution is fighting me on this.

I need to move my .evolution file, which is 8.5 gig of letters and addresses to a new machine. I admit, it sounds simple, but for some reason Evolution isn't cooperating. I have set up the second machine with the same user name and password as the machine my file is coming from, because Evolution seems extremely aware of who the user is suppose to be.

I have tried moving the Evolution created backup tar file over and restoring from it. When I launch Evolution I get the wizard, but it is more interested in importing from OTHER competing email clients, so I end up manually entering my pop/smtp addressing, then then after Evolution is running, trying to do a restore. But this leaves me with a buggy setup, as it will not see all the different address books, etc.


And I have tried a direct ssh2 transfer by simply copying from one machine to the other. In fact, I am retrying that right now. You would think Evolution would launch, see its data file, and be happy. But no, it gives me the wizard instead. The thing knows I have moved it and seems hell bent on trying to ignore the information in its data files....basically having the same problem as I described above. I even tried wiping out my entire user directory and transfering all the contents of my old user directory over, thinking it was keeping notes in other hidden files. I got the wizard when I launched. And that is the point I am now setting at, as I write this.

Does anyone know how to properly make the leap between machines with Evolution?

It's not only the .evolution directory. Evolution, being a big and fuzzy application, will spew config files all over your home directory, or close enough. :-)

1. Make sure gconftool-2 and Evolution are shut down. Run gconftool-2 --shutdown, followed by evolution --force-shutdown to make sure they are.

2. Back up the data: cd to your home directory and run tar cpfvj evo.tar.bz2 .gnome2_private/Evolution .gconf/apps/evolution .evolution (the -p flag to tar will preserve permissions and ownership).

3. scp your tar file to your new machine, make sure Evolution and gconftool-2 are shut down (see #1) and unpack the tar file in your home directory, use -p flag again to preserve ownership. Log out and then in again (to revive gconftool-2) and start Evo and you should be good to go, if I haven't forgotten about anything.

close evolution
remove the .evolution directory
then untar the file by hand
restart evolution