Re: dimap, where are mails stored locally and how to back up?

Dirk Sarpe wrote:

> Hi and happy new year to everybody :)
> 
> I use kmail2 (kde 4.8 rc1) and have several IMAP accounts set up. For all
> the option offline in kmail is activated. To my understanding this should
> be the same as disconnected IMAP (DIMAP) in kmail1 and mails should be
> not only stored on the IMAP server but also on the local hard drive.
> Indeed I can access my mails when the machine is offline. So far so good.
> 
> Now http://blogs.kde.org/node/4503 claims that the akonadi database is
> just an interface plus a data cache and the actual mails are still stored
> in files. But where (apart from the IMAP server of course)?

In case this wasn't clear, in case of disconnected IMAP mode, the mails are 
stored of course on the *server*. The local storage is in the akonadi 
database and the files_db_data folder. There is no good reason to store the 
mails also in another place (that'd mean storing them in 3 places).
> 
> To find mails I got before I changed from kmail1 to kmail2 I did a
> 
> grep -r "Happy new year to you too." $HOME > whereismymail.txt
> 
> and found last years mails in
> ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/dimap/.2107837688.directory/
> and last years and this years mails in

That was KMail1's local cache. KMail1 used a maildir like structure for 
local cache for "some" reason (as KMail1 was originally NOT designed for 
IMAP)

> /.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/
> plus matches in the binary
> ~/.kde/share/apps/nepomuk/repository/main/data/virtuosobackend/soprano-
> virtuoso.db
> 
> It seems that all mails of all DIMAP accounts are in
> /.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/
> What I find disturbing, there is no folder structure whatsoever in this
> folder, just the plain files. 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.

Of course the database should be backed up after the server processes are 
stopped to have it in a consistent state. Unfortunately there is no software 
doing this automatically. :(

Andras
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