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John Rose
Asked: 2013-01-02 11:00:55 +0800 CST

How to backup Gmail in Precise

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Any reasonable way of backing up Gmail (imap) using Precise? BTW I've tried backup-gmail but it's unstable.

12.04

2 Answers

  1. 1 possible sollution: gmvault. It is command line so you can use it on a server too.

    Backup all your emails on disk.

    Use the full sync mode to backup your entire gmail account in a unique directory. Your email backup repository can then be easily tarred and moved from one machine to the other.

    Update your backup in minutes.

    Gmvault can run a quick sync mode regularly (ie. every day) to keep your backup up to date.

    Restore emails in any Gmail acc.

    With the restore command Gmvault can recreate your gmail mailboxes in any Gmail account. All attributes such as Gmail labels are preserved and recreated. With restore, you will recover your Gmail account exactly as it was.

    Linux Installation

    On Linux, it is recommended to install Gmvault using the source distribution or Pypi.

    sudo apt-get install python python-setuptools
sudo easy_install -U distribute
wget https://github.com/downloads/gaubert/gmvault/gmvault-v1.7-beta-src.tar.gz
tar xvzf gmvault-1.7-beta-src.tar.gz

    Python is already installed so it will error out. Then install with ...

    cd gmvault-1.7-beta/
sudo python setup.py install

    The basic setup is about as simple as it comes:

    gmvault sync [email protected]

    Synching the last 2 months:

    gmvault sync --type quick [email protected]

    More information on setting it up here.

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  2. Rinzwind,

    I decided to go with gmvault. I already had python & python-setuptools packages installed. I don't remember previously installing them but I'm not sure as I upgraded from Lucid to Precise and it could have happened in my Lucid period. I found that I had to do 'sudo easy_install -U distribute' as 'sudo python setup.py install' didn't work properly without it. If I install another Python app, would I have to do that command again?

    The above installation seems much simpler than the methods outlined in gmvault's website.

    The gmvault website states that the -t option is 'to daily backup' & 'with the last 7 days of emails'. Your use of the --type option states that it's the last 2 months. Assuming that -t is equivalent to --type, I'm confused. Which is correct? Perhaps the quick parameter changes the time period? I'm just trying to work out the options that I need for a GUI.

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