Ubuntu
evolution package

Mail backup via file saving

Asked by Rod May

For contractual reasons I have to keep my mail for at least 6 years. I plan to backup to say the start of each year by saving the folder "mail" in the evolution folder as previously discussed. However, I note there is a folder called "link to mail" as well. What is the purpose of the "Link to mail" folder and does it need backing up as well? Having completed this backup process, and then deleted a lot of old mail from evolution after backup, I note that the "Link to mail" folder is still roughly the old size about twice the size of my new reduced "Mail" folder.

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Markus Thielmann
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Markus Thielmann (thielmann) said : 		#1

Thanks for your question.

Which version of Ubuntu do you use? I'm using Evolution with Ubuntu Feisty and there's no such file/directory called "Link to mail".

It would be helpfull if you add the output of "ls -hl ~/.evolution" to the question.

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Rod May (rodmay) said : 		#2

I am currently using Ubuntu 5.10. I plan to upgrade, hopefuuly within the next month. Below is the directory list for my evolution. As you can see there is a folder called "link to mail".
rod@ubuntu:~$ ls -hl .evolution
total 176K
drwxr-xr-x 4 rod rod 96 2005-12-24 22:37 addressbook
drwx------ 4 rod rod 96 2006-01-02 17:31 cache
drwxr-xr-x 5 rod rod 120 2005-12-24 22:37 calendar
-rw------- 1 rod rod 3 2007-06-01 14:18 camel-cert.db
-rw------- 1 rod rod 64K 2007-06-01 14:18 cert8.db
-rw------- 1 rod rod 128K 2007-06-01 14:18 key3.db
drwxr-xr-x 7 rod rod 232 2007-05-28 12:55 link to mail
drwxr-xr-x 7 rod rod 232 2007-06-01 14:18 mail
-rw------- 1 rod rod 128K 2005-12-24 22:30 secmod.db
drwx------ 2 rod rod 144 2007-04-25 09:19 signatures
drwxr-xr-x 5 rod rod 120 2005-12-24 22:37 tasks
r

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Best Markus Thielmann (thielmann) said : 		#3

Well, Ubuntu 5.10 is no longer supported, so you should really upgrade.

Both "link to mail" and "mail" share the same size. Unfortunatly, I'm totally unaware of that "link to mail" directory. It's neither a soft- or hardlink, as the name could suggest.

As the mail seems to be quite important to you, I'd suggest doing a backup to the whole ~/.evolution directory. Better wasting backup space than loosing data.

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Rod May (rodmay) said : 		#4

Thanks, this in essence solves my problem. I have moved "link to mail" out of the evolution and no problems have arisen with running the application. I don't now how the "link to mail" got there but I assume it was in error. When I upgrade Ubuntu shortly the issue will be history.