I'm trying to copy my emails from the directory ../.kde/share/.../inbox
but for some reason the operation only copy some of them into my external HD.

I'm using "cp" in the shell. Does somebody can tell me, what could be the problem?

That does seem strange. Assuming that there are no permission problems they should have copied ok. I don't suppose you can see any pattern to which copied and which didn't?

Have you tried taking them in batches?

I would recommend to create an archive, e.g. a tar.gz.

This will include hidden files/folders an be recursive.

Cheers,
_

anda_skoa wrote:I would recommend to create an archive, e.g. a tar.gz.

This will include hidden files/folders an be recursive.

Cheers,
_

as well as preserving permissions

I back up my emails every week simply by backing up /home and selecting Add Hidden Files in K3b.

I'm trying to restore a backup of my mother's kmail account Kubuntu Karmic to the new kmail in Kubuntu Lucid. I copied everything over from the ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail folder. However, when I open the new kmail, none of the accounts are listed and the emails are not present. Is there a definitive way to backup and restore kmail? She is using kmail within kontact, if that makes a difference.

It doesn't. http://userbase.kde.org/KMail/FAQs_Hint ... machine.29 will tell you exactly what you need to backup

Perfect! These four were the missing pieces:

# ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc,
# ~/.kde/share/config/mailtransports, (since KDE 4.0)
# ~/.kde/share/config/emaildefaults and
# ~/.kde/share/config/emailidentities

Thank you much

rsync is also a good tool. I routinely rsync my entire /home. After the first, LOOOOOONG backup, rsync examines and backs up changes. Obviously, not the only solution, but it does work well.

jglen490 wrote:rsync is also a good tool. I routinely rsync my entire /home. After the first, LOOOOOONG backup, rsync examines and backs up changes. Obviously, not the only solution, but it does work well.

Yeah, gotta love rsync. I recently wrote a tutorial on how to set up automatic backups to a network hard drive using rsync:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1471854

I just couldn't figure out how to restore kmail from the back up that was created because of those config files that are outside of the kmail folder.

Nice tutorial! I don't get that deep with mine, just want to be sure that my /home is saved to an external drive effectively and efficiently. Don't even use a script, just copy and paste the CL entry from a text file.

But, I would think that it would be possible (under narrow conditions) to selectively copy a file from the external drive back to a specified location. Maybe not good script material, but certainly possible at the CL.

Nonetheless, I'll be studying your tutorial more so I can script the backup. Thanks.

You can also use luckybackup. It is a nice frontend for rsync.

Thanks, again. Didn't know about that one, I'll do some looking.

Finally there is a great front-end for rsync based on Qt.
Look at http://www.darhon.com/syncbackup

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