== User configuration backup
=== Why you would want to do this
If you are going to reinstall your system, and have some custom
configuration, you may save some time by making a backup of your
configuration and restoring it on the new system, rather than going through
the menus to recreate it.
=== How to do it
==== Index/search configuration
The main recoll configuration data is normally kept inside '~/.recoll' or
whatever *$RECOLL_CONFDIR* is set to.
This directory contains both configuration files and generated index
data.In a standard configuration, the following files and directories
contain generated data:
- 'xapiandb' contains the Xapian index, which normally consumes most of the
total space.
- 'aspdict.en.rws' contains the aspell dictionary used for spelling
corrections.
- 'mboxcache' contains cached offset data for email messages inside mbox
folders.
- 'webcache' contains saved web pages. This is more than a cache as
destroying it will purge the corresponding data during the next
indexing.
The other files are either very small or contain configuration data.
If you want to only save configuration, using minimum space, you can
destroy the above files and directories (with the possible exception of
'webcache'). Then taking a copy of the '.recoll' directory and adding the
GUI configuration data described in the next will get you a full
configuration data backup.
==== GUI configuration
The parameters set from the _Query configuration_ Qt menus are stored in
Qt standard places:
- '~/.qt/recollrc' for Qt 3.x
- '~/.config/Recoll.org/recoll.conf' for Qt 4 and later
==== Other data
If you wish to save index data in addition to the customisation files,
which only makes sense if the document access paths do not change after
reinstallation, you can just take a backup of the full '.recoll'
directory, taking care that the storage locations for some data elements
can be changed (not be inside '.recoll'):
- The index data is normally kept inside '~/.recoll/xapiandb', but the
location of this directory can be modified by the +dbdir+
configuration parameter if it is set (check 'recoll.conf').
- If you use the Firefox Recoll plugin, the WEB history cache is normally
kept inside '~/.recoll/webcache', but the location can be modified by
the +webcachedir+ configuration parameter.