If you use FC5 or 6 and use Evolution as your email client of choice, here’s the best way that I have found to back up your mail to restore it to a new Evolution.
Evolution stores your data in $HOME/.evolution, your account settings in $HOME/.gconf/apps/evolution and your passwords in $HOME/.gnome2_private/Evolution.
SSL Certificates are stored in $HOME/.camel_certs.
First of all, shut Evolution and its background processes (Evolution Data Server, Evolution Alarm Notify) completly down by using evolution --force-shutdown.
Then copy the contents of $HOME/.evolution/, $HOME/.gnome2_private/Evolution, $HOME/.camel_certs.
Then dump your Evolution settings stored in GConf by running gconftool-2 --dump /apps/evolution > some-file.xml where “some-file.xml” is the name of the file the information is written to.
On the new partition, make sure you are not running GConf (by “ps ax | grep gconf” for example; you normally have to leave Gnome for that and then run “gconftool-2 –shutdown” on the shell).
Then import those settings by running gconftool-2 --load some-file.xml and log in to Gnome again, also copy the three folders
($HOME/.evolution/, $HOME/.gnome2_private/Evolution, $HOME/.camel_certs).
