[kdepim-users] how do i...

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Wednesday September 30 2015 20:47:25 salamandir at hybridelephant.com wrote:

>i backed up my entire /home directory, including the hidden files and 
>directories. i have that backup on a 16GB flash drive, so that nothing 
>will happen to it.

That should contain everything. However:

- To be certain it's a really self-contained and valid backup, you should either make it while you're very sure nothing is open (like dbase files), or you should make the backup while logged in as a different user, or booted off an alternative boot disk.
One way to be reasonably sure that no processes are running that might have files open that should only be backed up when they're not in use, is to restart and then log in to a virtual console. You can probably do that via your regular login manager, or else hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 and log in to that console. Or you connect over ssh. You'll get a bare-bones shell, and you'll be able to make a backup of your entire home directory the old-fashioned way.

- You should restore your backup in the same way. Specifically, you're almost certainly bound to get bad results if you restore KMail's files when new copies of those files already exist and are open. That means that not only should you not be running KMail during the restore, akonadi shouldn't be running either (and that one is probably started automatically even with a new, default login environment). The same goes for plenty of other files that store your desktop settings.

- Your new machine should have a compatible Linux version installed. In this case that means one that has KMail (and the other KDE PIM stuff) that can read your backed up files, but also that expects them in the same location. I'm not sure that'll be the case when you migrate from a KDE4 to a fully KF5 based desktop.
About this: I think I managed to import my KDE4 desktop settings (from Kubuntu 14.04) into a test VM running Kubuntu 15.04 but it's a bit tricky. From what I understand, that migration is done only once, so it means you have to login to a console (or over ssh), *remove* the appropriate hidden directories, and then put your backup in place. At the next login, something will detect that the new versions don't exist, and perform whatever import/migration the KDE developers have decided to give us. 

R.
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