copy emails from suse 9.3 to suse 10.0
 

I have been running SuSE 9.3 for some time and use Kmail as my mail client.

I fitted a new HDD on the same computer and installed SuSE 10.
Is there any way of copying the Kmail email structure from the 9.3 installation to the 10 installation?

I have no problems with adding the SuSE 9.3 HDD as a secondary drive and mounting it.
Any help will be much appreciated.

I think kmail stores the emails to /home/yourusername/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail by default. I\d try just copying the contents of that folder to the corresponding folder on your 10.0 disk.

You need to do two things here.

First is to copy the files:-

emailidenties

kmailrc

Theres are hidden files in your home folder - so you need to select the 'show hidden files' option first. The files contain your email account details and settings and are under the config folder in .kde.

Then you need to copy the email folders under Mail in your home directory. Put all this on a cdr (good to have a back-up anyway).

Then copy back the two files to your new hard drive and then copy the email folders to your new mail folder. Once done - click on the mail folders property button and add a tick in box about changing the ownership of sub-folders.

Then start kmail and it should all be there!

If you have any problems post back.

Nearly worked once!

I got a message that came and went pretty quickly but I got the gist of it.
Seems kmailrc could not be written. Is this that wonderful problem with data copied from CD is read only? Certainly the attributes only had r's, so I added w's. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do.

Anyway, it's no worse than it was, I still have no email setup! But everything else seems to work the same and I still have my SuSE 9.3 HDD to put back on to receive email.

Is there something I needto do via the Konsole?

OK, so I took another look at the 9.3 HDD and found the mail folder not in the home directory, but in home/username/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail

I also noted the attributes of the files that were to be copied.
Then went back to the 10.0 HDD and moved the mail directory to where it should have been.
Recopied the other two files and reset their attributes to those of the 9.3 installation. Also set the sub-foders checkbox for the mail directory.

Now when I run Kmail I do get the SuSE 9.3 Inbox, but none of the others. The mail directory does contain the mailbox structure.

Any ideas?

Found the problem but haven't fixed it yet.

My directories under mail directory, other than kmail standard directories, are set to root permissions even though I set the check box in properties, permissions to set the ownership of sub-folders.

So when I go back with File Manager - Super User Mode to change the permissions, again ticking that check box, the sub folders remain firmly the property of root.
However, if I go to each sub folder in turn I can set the permissions OK. Tedious or what?

Is there something else that needs to be done to make that check box work? I seem to think that this can all be done with console commands, but don't know how - yet.

I have done about half the mailbox directories and these now show up in kmail.

Some more help would be appreciated.