Complete Kontact Backup and Restoration

[James Gray]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:10 am, Raymond wrote:
> What is the process to backup the COMPLETE Kontact database (email,
> calendar, addresses, todo, etc.) for possible restoration.
>
> Raymond

There's a number of places through your home directory that KDE puts the stuff 
Kontact uses to do its magic.

~/Mail - kmail folders etc.
~/.kde/share/apps/kaddressbook - address book data
~/.kde/share/apps/knode - knode (Usenet) data
~/.kde/share/apps/kwallet - KWallet, this is where passwords are stored etc.
~/.kde/share/apps/korganizer - Calendar etc.
~/.kde/share/config/ - contains the configs for all/most KDE components. 
Either backup this entire directory, or pick out the apps you want the 
configs for.

So if you put each of those directories/files in a file, (one on each line 
without the "~/" because tar doesn't do the "~" expansion so will complain 
that a literal directory called "~" doesn't exist). Call the file 
"kontact.backup" in your home directory, then you can do some "tar" magic 
like this:

cd ~
tar -cf - -T ./knotact.backup | gzip - > knotact_backup-$(date +%Y%M%d).tgz

When done, you'll have date-stamped file like "kontact_backup-20050629.tgz" 
with all your data in it :)  This is begging for a cron job isn't it ;)

To restore a backup, reverse the process:

cd ~
tar -zxf kontact_backup-YYYYMMDD.tgz

Make sure you go through ~/.kde/share/apps/ and find all the application 
components you use in Kontact.

HTH,

James
-- 
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing
what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail.  No exceptions.
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