CentOS - Nov 2009 - Fedora 11 i386 Evolution address book --> CentOS 5.4 x86_64

Finally moved my home desktop from Fedora to CentOS.  My spouse was
unhappy with me upgrading from F9-->F10-->f11 etc and wanted something
more stable.

I built a second machine which is now running in parallel to the old F11
desktop.  I moved my data (mail and files) from the F11 box to the
CentOS 5.4 box.  I used tar to move everything. Mail and files
transferred A-OK...but the Evolution address book did not.

Any tips on getting the old /home/.../.evolution/addressbook which
worked with the version of Evolution on the new machine with an older
version of Evolution?

BTW, on CentOS, I cannot add new addresses to the address book.  User_id
on the new machine is the same as on the old machine, so perms should
not be the problem. I checked the selinux context and it is the same as
everything else in /home

If I do a forced reinstall of Evolution would it mess up the mail files?

DaveM

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 9:53 AM, David McGuffey
<davidmcguffey at verizon.net> wrote:
> Finally moved my home desktop from Fedora to CentOS. ?My spouse was
<snip>
 and files
> transferred A-OK...but the Evolution address book did not.
>
> Any tips on getting the old /home/.../.evolution/addressbook which
> worked with the version of Evolution on the new machine with an older
> version of Evolution?
>
> BTW, on CentOS, I cannot add new addresses to the address book. ?User_id
<snip.
>
> If I do a forced reinstall of Evolution would it mess up the mail files?
Dave: If you want to reinstall Evolution, I suggest you copy your
.evolution folder and rename it to something else, before you do that,
in case things do not go well.

Not sure of the answers to your Evolution problems. I used it for
years and finally switched to Mozilla Thunderbird, during September
2008, to avoid  problems with Evolution. My experience with Evolution,
at that time, was that help on the Novell Support web site was
difficult or impossible to find.
http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html  but
maybe it is better now. My memory isn't clear on the issues, but it
seems like I used a converter somewhere on the web, to convert my
Evolution address book into another widely used format. I still have a
small .evolution folder on this box and see the addressbook.db file.
Not sure where the file converter is, but I see files on my hard drive
in .csv  .ldif and .vcf formats. Probably I exported my Evolution
Address book in one of those formats and then converted into another
format Thunderbird could import.    My suggestion: If you are using
other things in Evolution, in addition to email, stay with it. But, if
you are only using it for email, consider moving to Mozilla
Thunderbird or something else. GL, Lanny

On 11/28/09, David McGuffey <davidmcguffey at verizon.net>
wrote:
> Finally moved my home desktop from Fedora to CentOS.  My spouse was
> unhappy with me upgrading from F9-->F10-->f11 etc and wanted
something
> more stable.
>
> I built a second machine which is now running in parallel to the old F11
> desktop.  I moved my data (mail and files) from the F11 box to the
> CentOS 5.4 box.  I used tar to move everything. Mail and files
> transferred A-OK...but the Evolution address book did not.
>
> Any tips on getting the old /home/.../.evolution/addressbook which
> worked with the version of Evolution on the new machine with an older
> version of Evolution?
<snip>

If you have the Source RPMS for FC6, you can probably rebuild all the
Evolution packages you need to install Evolution, for CentOS 5.4.  A
year or two ago, I used a 32 bit FC6 package, without rebuilding, but
now I know that's frowned upon, so better to rebuild for CentOS.
CentOS 5.x (and the upstream equivalent) is based upon FC6, if my
memory is correct. The question is whether or not the address book for
the new machine will work with an older version of Evolution.

On Sun, 2009-11-29 at 10:32 -0500, Lanny Marcus wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 7:00 PM, David McGuffey
> <davidmcguffey at verizon.net> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > Maybe I should check to see if Evolution on F11 can export the db into
> > something that Evolution on 5.4 can import.
> 
> Yes. If you are lucky, that will work OK. Possibly you can find some
> information on the Novell support site. Sounds like you are moving
> from a newer to an older Evolution and need backward compatibility. GL
I exported the newer (F11) Evolution address book to vcf, then created a
new address book on the older (CentOS) Evolution, then imported the vcf
into it.  All is well.

DaveM

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 5:55 AM, David McGuffey
<davidmcguffey at verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-11-29 at 10:32 -0500, Lanny Marcus wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 7:00 PM, David McGuffey
>> <davidmcguffey at verizon.net> wrote:
>> > <snip>
>> > Maybe I should check to see if Evolution on F11 can export the db
into
>> > something that Evolution on 5.4 can import.
>>
>> Yes. If you are lucky, that will work OK. Possibly you can find some
>> information on the Novell support site. Sounds like you are moving
>> from a newer to an older Evolution and need backward compatibility. GL
>
> I exported the newer (F11) Evolution address book to vcf, then created a
> new address book on the older (CentOS) Evolution, then imported the vcf
> into it. ?All is well.
Cool Dave. Case closed.  :-)  That saved you a huge amount of time and
trouble.   :-)