[Evolution] cron job to backup old mail

[Jason Cooper]

Ron Johnson (ron.l.johnson@cox.net) scribbled:
> On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 08:10 -0400, Jason Cooper wrote: 
> > I'm attempting to get my old email under control.  I have about 450M in
> > an 'OldMail' folder in evolution.  It's stored in mbox format.  
> > 
> > If I tar up the entire 'OldMail' directory which includes this list:
> > 
> > total 427933
> > -rw-r--r--  1 jcooper users        86 Oct 10  2003 folder-metadata.xml
> > -rw-------  1 jcooper users        95 Aug 18 12:51 local-metadata.xml
> > -rw-------  1 jcooper users 434518823 Aug 19 15:24 mbox
> > -rw-------  1 jcooper users    762091 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ev-summary
> > -rw-------  1 jcooper users    928768 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ibex.index
> > -rw-------  1 jcooper users   1550676 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ibex.index.data
> > 
> > Can I just remove it?  Will evolution barf on it disappearing?  Also,
> > later down the road, if I copied it back into place, would evolution
> > recognize it correctly?
> > 
> > I guess the point I'm really trying to get at is this.  Does evolution
> > rely solely on the contents of this directory to tell it what mail is
> > there?
> > 
> > Usually I would just experiment, but this data is too critical. :(
> 
> If you put a new mbox file in the directory /while Evo is shut down/,
> then, the next time it starts up, it will re-index the emails.
> 
> Thus, since a 0 length mbox is valid, Evo will that, too.
> 
> For example:
> $ evolution --force-shutdown
> $ x=`date +%y%m%d.%H%M`
> $ mv ~/evolution/mail/local/subdirs/OldMail/mbox \
>       ~/tmp/OldMail-$x.mbox
> $ gzip ~/tmp/OldMail-$x.mbox
> $ touch ~/evolution/mail/local/subdirs/OldMail/mbox
> $ evolution  ## Evo will start up fine
> 
> (Yes, the subdirectory tree is wrong, but close enough for these
> purposes.)

Thanks for the summary.  I didn't think to touch the mbox file.  I'll
add that to my script.  

I'm breaking OldMail down (from within evo) into a folder for each
month, so I can be a little more selective on what goes to our backup
server.  

Thanks again for the quick replies.

Cooper.