Here are some frequently asked questions about the Evolution groupware suite from Ximian. Where can I get the latest Evolution release? There are two ways to install the latest Evolution release: If you have Ximian GNOME installed, you can start Red Carpet, Ximian's software updating system, and subscribe to the Evolution channel. This will let you install a binary for the latest release, and will also warn you when a new version has been made available. If you want to compile from source, you can download the latest official Evolution tarball from: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/evolution Are binary snapshots available? Yes, if you have Ximian GNOME installed. Just run Red Carpet and subscribe to the Evolution Snapshot channel. You can check the status of snapshots at http://primates.ximian.com/~snapshot. Why isn't a new snapshot available today? Sometimes the build might fail because of problems with the source on CVS. In this case, just wait for next day's snapshot. How do I get Evolution from CVS? If you already have GNOME CVS access, simply check out the following modules: evolution, gtkhtml, gal. If you don't have a CVS account, you can use anoncvs instead. Bear in mind that anoncvs is only synchronized once a day, and code received from anoncvs may not be latest version available. Before using the anoncvs server, you have to log into it. This only needs to be done once. Use this command: cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome login Then you can retrieve the modules needed to compile Evolution using the following command: cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome co evolution gtkhtml gal How should I compile Evolution avoiding conflicts with my existing GNOME installation? The best way is to install Evolution into a separate prefix. In order to specify a non-default installation prefix, you can pass the --prefix option to configure or autogen.sh. For example: cd /cvs/evolution ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome If you install Evolution and the Evolution libraries in a non-standard prefix, make sure you set the appropriate environment variables in the startup script for Evolution: export PATH=/opt/gnome:$PATH export GNOME_PATH=/opt/gnome:/usr You may also need to add $prefix/lib (e.g. /opt/gnome/lib) to your /etc/ld.so.conf. Of course, this will not work for systems which do not use ld.so.conf, such as HP-UX. I get make: *** No rule to make target `all-no-@BUILD_INCLUDED_LIBINTL@' You probably have gettext 0.10.36 or later installed. Try downgrading to 0.10.35; unfortunately, 0.10.36 introduced some incompatibilities with the current xml-i18n-tools. I get Cannot initialize the Evolution shell. Check that: oafd is listen in your PATH environment variable. GNOME_Evolution_Shell.oaf and the other       GNOME_Evolution_*.oaf files are readable and installed in $prefix/share/oaf, where $prefix is one of the prefixes listed in GNOME_PATH or OAF_INFO_PATH.  (These variables are supposed to contain $PATH-like colon-separated lists of paths.  If the installation prefix for Evolution is different from that). Run `oaf-slay' once before running `evolution' again if you change $GNOME_PATH or $OAF_INFO_PATH. evolution, evolution-mail and the other evolution-* executables are in your $PATH. I get Cannot open composer window. This actually means that Evolution cannot activate the HTML editor component from GtkHTML. The comments in the previous answer still apply; also make sure that gnome-gtkhtml-editor is in your PATH. I updated my Evolution, but my addressbook contacts are no longer there, what should I do? Evolution uses the libdb library to handle the addressbook database. Two versions of libdb can be used with Evolution: version 1.88 and version 2. Unfortunately, an Evolution executable that is linked against a certain version of libdb will only be able to read addressbook files written by another Evolution executable that is linked with the same version of the library. If your addressbook is not readable by Evolution anymore, it probably means that you used to have Evolution linked with a certain version of libdb, but now it gets linked to a different version. Because of the way libdb is designed, it is not easy for Evolution to automatically do the conversion between the two formats. But, if your Evolution used to be linked against version 1.85 and now is linked to version 2, there is a very simple way to convert the database and recover your data. First of all, check the format of the database using the file command: file ~/evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook.db You want version 1.85 there. If your version is 2, then your current Evolution is probably linked against version 1.85 and you cannot convert the database to the old format. To do that, follow these instructions: Quit Evolution. Make a copy of the addressbook database for backup purposes. cd ~/evolution/local/Contacts cp addressbook.db addressbook.db.backup Convert the contacts to the new format using db_dump185 and db_load: db_dump185 ~/evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook.db.backup | db_load ~/evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook.db Restart Evolution. Evolution reported an error when trying to retrieve from my local spool in /var/spool/mail/username. Why? Evolution doesn't have an external helper for moving mail, so /var/spool/mail/ must be writable by you. Try this: chmod 1777 /var/spool/mail Yes, we know this is a problem. It will be fixed eventually. Evolution crashes reporting that it couldn't allocate N billion bytes; how do I fix this? This usually happens when a component tries talking a certain version of a CORBA interface to another component that supports a different version. For example, this can happen when you recompile and install a single component without recompiling/installing the rest of Evolution. So, if this occurs to you, make sure all the components are compiled and installed at the same time. This also applies to GtkHTML upgrades; after upgrading and installing a newer GtkHTML, always re-compile and re-install Evolution against it. What is killev and why do I need to use it? Evolution is actually made up of several components that run as separate processes. Evolution's shell is not very good at cleaning up stale processes, so it is possible that sometimes already-running components cause unexpected and/or broken behavior. It's always a good idea to run killev after a crash in Evolution, especially if the Evolution shell itself crashed. (If a component crashes instead, you should try to exit the shell cleanly first, so you give a chance to the other components to clean things up properly.) What is oaf-slay and why do I need to use it? oaf-slay is an utility which comes with OAF, the Object Activation Framework that is used in the GNOME Desktop to activate components. It will kill the object activation daemon (oafd) as well as all the active components on the system. Normally, you shouldn't need to run oaf-slay, unless oafd gets stuck or confused. For example, it might help in case Evolution cannot activate components. Using oaf-slay oaf-slay is quite drastic and can cause problems with other programs that use oaf, especially with Nautilus. To avoid problems, do not run oaf-slay while you are in GNOME. Find a bug? Here's how to help us fix it! Where should I report bugs for Evolution? You should report bugs about Evolution into the Ximian bug reporting system (Bugzilla), located at http://bugzilla.ximian.com. Please use the query function to check if a bug has been submitted already before submitting it. Can I just use Bug-Buddy? Not yet. The Ximian bug tracker does not yet have an email-based interface, so Bug Buddy cannot talk to it. This will be fixed eventually. What is a stack trace (backtrace) and how do I get one? A stack trace is a list of the chain of function calls that lead to some point in the program. Typically, you want to get a stack trace when Evolution crashes or hangs and you want to try to figure out where in the code that happened and why. For this reason, stack traces are extremely useful for the Evolution developers, so it's important that you learn how to get them, and include them in crash reports. Once we have bug-buddy working with our bug database, it will be much easier to do this. Until then, here's how: First of all, in order to get a stack trace, your executable (and possibly the libraries) must be compiled with debugging symbols. Debugging symbols are created by default if you compile from CVS, and are included in the snapshot builds. If you decide to compile by yourself with some custom CFLAGS value, make sure -g is included in them. Finally, you must put the component that crashes through gdb. Make sure all the components are dead (exit Evolution and killev), then run the following command: gdb name-of-component Then, at the gdb prompt, type r (for "run") and wait a few seconds to make sure the component has registered with the name service. Then start Evolution normally from a different terminal. Then, reproduce the crash, and go back to the terminal where you ran gdb. If the component crashed, you should have a prompt there; otherwise, just hit Control C . At the prompt, type: info threads This will give you a list of the current running threads, e.g. (gdb) info threads 8 Thread 6151 (LWP 14908) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 7 Thread 5126 (LWP 14907) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 6 Thread 4101 (LWP 1007) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 5 Thread 3076 (LWP 1006) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 4 Thread 2051 (LWP 1005) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 3 Thread 1026 (LWP 1004) 0x409778fe in sigsuspend () from /lib/libc.so.6 2 Thread 2049 (LWP 1003) 0x40a10d90 in poll () from /lib/libc.so.6 1 Thread 1024 (LWP 995) 0x40a10d90 in poll () from /lib/libc.so.6 (Notice that, normally, only evolution-mail will have more than one thread.) Now, for each of the thread listed, type the following commands: thread N bt Where `N' is the thread number. (In this example, you would have to do it with N as 1, 2, 3... 8.) Then cut and paste all the output into some text file, and quit gdb by typing quit. You can also get a stack trace from a running component or a component that has just crashed. Just start gdb normally and, instead of using the r command, use attach to attach to the running process: attach PID Where PID is the PID of the component. Notice that this also works if you attach right after a crash dialog appears, before hitting "OK" or "Submit bug report". Following is a list of questions about the features in Evolution. How can I remove a folder? Currently there is no command in Evolution to remove a folder, so you have to remove it by hand. All the folders are stored in ~/evolution/local. Each folder is a directory containing the data files, as well as a subfolders directory that contains all its subfolders. So for example if you have a subfolder of the Inbox called Foo, you can run the following command to get rid of it (and all it subfolders): rm -rf ~/evolution/local/Inbox/subfolders/Foo You should do this after exiting Evolution. Why doesn't drag and drop between folders seem to work? The implementation isn't finished, although it's planned to be finished soon. In the meantime, you can copy the folders' contents by hand from the shell (please do this after quitting Evolution). For example: cp -r ~/evolution/local/Inbox/subfolders/Foo ~/evolution/local/Inbox/subfolders/Bar Likewise, you can use mv to rename or move folders. Can I read mail from a mailbox file created by some other application (e.g. Mutt) without importing mail from it? No, but it's a planned feature. Can Evolution sync to my Palm OS (tm) device? Yes. Evolution needs to be compiled with Palm syncing support for this to work though. Please refer to the README file for additional information on the requirements. What is the difference between a virtual folder (vfolder) and a regular folder? A virtual folder is like a saved search: it is a view of your mail. Regular folders actually contain the mail messages. You can have one message be in multiple virtual folders, but only in one regular folder. See the section in the Evolution manual about virtual folders for more information. Can Evolution spell-check the messages while I compose them? Yes. The Evolution composer is able to highlight mis-spelled word on the fly as you type them, and also give you suggestions for possible corrections. In order for this to work you need the gnome-spell component, which is not shipped with Ximian GNOME yet. If you are brave enough, you can check out module gnome-spell from the GNOME CVS and compile it yourself. Check out its README file for a list of gnome-spell's requirements for compilation. Note that you don't need to recompile Evolution after installing gnome-spell; it will be picked up automatically. I cannot see the images that are contained in some HTML mail message I am getting. Why? Evolution currently doesn't support this, but it's a planned feature. It will be an option: many people like to turn off the images because they use up bandwidth and can be used to spy on your email reading habits. Can I change the font that Evolution uses for compose and displaying mail messages? You have to change the GtkHTML settings for that: in the GNOME Control Center, go to the "HTML Viewer" configuration page, which is under the "Document Handlers" category. How do I import my Outlook .pst files into Evolution? You cannot import these files directly into Evolution because the .pst format is a proprietry format. However, Mozilla Mail on Windows can convert them into the mbox format, which can then be imported by Evolution. To start importing your Outlook mail to Evolution, run Mozilla Mail on Windows and select the FileImport... to begin. Then select that you wish to import Mail from Outlook. Once Mozilla has imported all your mail, reboot your computer into Linux. Mount your Windows partition in Linux and run Evolution to begin importing your mail. Select FileImport File... to start importing. Set the file type to MBox (mbox) and click on Browse to select the mail you want to import. If you are the only user on Windows, the mail files will be stored in /mnt/c/windows/Application Data/Mozilla/Profiles/default/XXXX/Mail/imported.mail/ where /mnt/c/ is your windows partition mount point and XXXX is some collection of numbers and digits ending in .slt. If there is more than one user, the file will be in /mnt/c/windows/Profiles/USERNAME/XXXX/Mail/imported.mail/ where USERNAME is your Windows username. For each mail folder in Outlook, Mozilla will convert the folder into one mbox file. To import all your mail, import all the files without a .msf extension. If Mozilla can import .pst files, why can't Evolution? Mozilla on Windows accesses the .pst files through the MAPI.DLL, which is only avaliable on Windows. MAPI.DLL is the only way to access .pst files and Evolution cannot use this DLL in Linux.