[kdepim-users] dimap, where are mails stored locally and how to back up?

[Dirk Sarpe]

Hi Andras and thanks for the reply.

Andras Mantia wrote:
> Dirk Sarpe wrote:
>> How is one supposed to make a sensible
>> backup of this?
> 
> The backup would be backing up the whole /.local/share/akonadi and
> /.config/akonadi (for the akonadi data and config) and the .kde/ for the
> generic kde config files, including KMail and Akonadi client settings.
> 
> Restoring would be the same, again first the servers (akonadi, mysql) need
> to be stopped. Stopping the akonadi server will stop mysql as well.

I see three possible pathways at the moment:

1. Backup at the IMAP server side directly
2. Backup using a tool on the backup machine that just fetches Mails from 
the IMAP server or since many mail providers offer IMAP and POP, use POP for 
this. Afterwards one can backup those mails locally to be on the save side, 
even if something strange to the IMAP server happens which gets synced to 
the machine. Incremental backup with rsync or a version control system with 
automatic commit after every sync might be a solution.
3. Local backup using only IMAP.  Stop the db, backup .local/share/akonadi 
and .config/akonadi and config files inside of .kde. Afterwards start the 
server again.


Solution 3 is the only one that would keep not only the mails but also the 
whole metadata and Akonadi configuration intact. But I still have some 
questions here (sorry :):

Do the files inside .local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/ keep their names, or 
do they change?

There are some bigger binary files in db_data/ for one ib_logifle0 and 
ib_logifle1 (64 MB), do they need to be backed up or are they just logfiles 
which can be ignored?

The three other big files are ibdata1 (10 MB), akonadi/parttable.ibd (36 MB) 
and akonadi/pimitemtable.ibd (9 MB) I guess they are needed and they will 
add their full size in an incremental rsync backup during each run.

I guess the relevant files inside .kde are all in /config, specificially 
AkonadiAgentServerrc, and all the akonadi* files. The akonadi* files in 
/apps all seem to be directories containing the cache of ical ressources 
(and several older versions of them). Sorry that I go into so much detail, 
but I want to keep the backup footprint small and their is at least one big 
file (nepomuk repository) and many small files which change rather 
frequently.

Cheers,
Dirk

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