After ubuntu reinstall, Evolution is requesting I start from scratch

Hi :)

I think the fastest way to do this is to use one of the installs you have on your external hard-drive.

Please boot into the Ubuntu that is on sdb5 and install "grsync" through Synaptic Package Manager (or any other package manager, apt-get will do). Now go up to the "Places" menu and open sda1. This is my weird way of getting sda1 mounted. It should now show up in /media

Grsync will come in useful later but for now it is better to use the command-line's rsync. We are going to try to copy the .evolution folder from sda1 to sdb5 so the command is something like this (avoiding using sudo)

rsync /dev/sda1/jack/.evolution ~/.evolution

The ~ character is a shortcut used by Ubuntu to represent the users /home/username folder. If i got the command wrong it is most likely to be the pathname of the source on sda1. See paragraph after next.

As you type on the command-line notice that pressing the tab key (just above CapsLock) does "autocomplete" or "predictive texting" to help complete pathnames and commands. It is a lot more sophisticated than the mobile phones version and it is worth getting used to it. I would try tapping the tab key as soon as arriving at the first "sd" in that command just to see if i was choosing a proper route as it wouldn't sho any options if i had got it wrong. Something else that often helps is using the arrow key on the keyboard to cycle up through previous commands. It often remembers far back beyond the last reboot.

Ok a better way to find the right pathname is to try looking in /media so type

cd /media
ls

where "ls" is a lower-case "LS" this should give a list of everything in that folder. There 'should' be at least 1 folder that has a very long reference number, the uuid number of sda1. Use right-clicks on the mouse to copy this number and use the up arrow to get back to the rsync command. Then the left arrow on the keyboard gets the command-line's cursor to the right place. A combination of typing and right-click to paste should help make the command into something like this

rsync /media/f87de3e2-0ab1-4010bfec-4087efda66ae/.evolution ~/.evolution

this may need "*.*" as wildcards at the end of the source part so if the above doesn't work try up-arrow again to make it into

rsync /media/f87de3e2-0ab1-4010bfec-4087efda66ae/.evolution/*.* ~/.evolution

and now i am not certain the evolution folder needs it's "." in front so try up arrow again and this time try

rsync /media/f87de3e2-0ab1-4010bfec-4087efda66ae/evolution ~/.evolution

Rsync is extremely fast and the evolution folder is very small so the only way you will know when you have got the command right is by keeping the evolution folder open in a file manager window and pressing refresh to see if your stuff has arrived from sda1. Once it has then evolution should be able to open with no troubles.

Please let us know how this goes!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I tried this last night...or at least to boot from external. The only ubuntu install I can see on Grub screen is 2.6.32.21 (on dev/sdb1) which gives me error messages of No such device f51c0220-b597-4ca8-8f62-894d74c842a8; No such partition; and you need to load kernel first

Should I run an install on the external and see if I can figure out whats up with the internal drive. I don't think it will work because I think there something up with internal drive in that I've reviewed the disk with analyzer and there should only be about 100 gig on the drive and its show 145?

Hi :)

I am not sure what is going on there. Since you have started on the more ambitious plan i think just stick with that and avoid this one now. The important thing is making sure all your data is safely somewhere. Ideally on the external drive since you are now about to reinstall to the internal drive.

Regards from
Tom :)

fyi I made a backup copy of .evolution in my home folder, deleted it, then replaced it with the back up I had from Wed. Unfortunately, when I restarted, evolution is still starting me from scratch, not the result i was hoping for.... back to square one.

Tom,

I was able to get evolution working... what I did is this:

1) made a backup copy of home/.evolution/
2)deleted home/.evolution
3)dragged and dropped .evolution folder from my Wednesday backup folder (on sdb5 or 1)
4)Went to my ISP, marked all my emails (from the last email I had in evolution) as new
5)Set up Evolution as if new
6)rebooted
7)started evolution
8)it downloaded all my new emails from the time I lost Ubuntu

While I don't have all my other preferences settings, i.e. desktop, mozilla, etc, I can start new and set them up.

So I'm good and will close this question. I can't thank you enough for all the help you gave me on this. I felt like I am slowly learning about how flexible Ubuntu really is and want to learn more. Any suggestion to that end will be greatly appreciated. I would like to do the following and appreciate if you can steer me to any good documentation about them:

a) clean up my external drive partitions once I've copied all my files back to internal
b) set up a good back up regiment using Ubuntu
c) set up Ubuntu anti-virus program
d) terminal commands

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you.