I'm trying to import anm old file, please help!

[Emporio]

Many years ago I played a lot Animal Crossing for GameCube on Dolphin (back then I was on Windows).
I kept my save files (two .cgi files, one for the save itself and the other for the Nes games) and now I decided to revisit my town (I am using Linux, Pop OS, now), so I tried to import my save file but it does not work.
I have seen that now Dolphin uses a directory with .cgi file for every game, while back then I used a virtual memory card file.
I tried to put the cgi files in the directory where Dolphin normally put saves but it does not work. I have tried saving a new game and then giving the same name to my old file and then renaming and replacing the new save with my old one but it still load the new save even if I changed the name of both files!!! I tried importing my old cgi files into a virtual memory card but for some reason the emulator just refuses to use a virtual memory card, even if I tell it to do so in the option it still load my saves from the directory with all the cgi files and doesn't care about the virtual memory card.
Can anybody help me please? Thanks!

[KHg8m3r]

Did you check the permissions on the files you've copied over? Do they match the permissions and owner of a Dolphin created save file? There are a few ways to check, one way is to open a terminal, navigate to the directory where the .cgi files are located, and run `ls -l`

Also make sure then name matches.

Also also, how did you get Dolphin? Compile from source, appimage, Flatpack, etc.?

[Emporio]

Did you check the permissions on the files you've copied over? Do they match the permissions and owner of a Dolphin created save file? There are a few ways to check, one way is  to open a terminal, navigate to the directory where the .cgi files are located, and run `ls -l`

Also make sure then name matches.

Also also, how did you get Dolphin? Compile from source, appimage, Flatpack, etc.?

Thank you!
I compared the permission of my old save file with another random one and they are different.

My old save file has this:

-rwxrwxrwx 1

the file I used to compare it to has this instead:

-rw-r--r-- 1

I downloaded Dolphin from the official Pop OS "shop", I think it was Flatpack but I'm not 100% sure.

[AnyOldName3]

A cursory googling suggests that it's a combination of the default Ubuntu repositories plus Flathub, so as I believe Dolphin's available through both, it could have come from either.

[Emporio]

A cursory googling suggests that it's a combination of the default Ubuntu repositories plus Flathub, so as I believe Dolphin's available through both, it could have come from either.

The only way I know to see what kind of package it is is to remove it and install it again, it says the package type of programs but only before you install them, and I prefer to not do so since the download is very slow.
I tried creating a new uer but I don't knoiw why I cannot find Dolphin in the shop with that new user.
Nevermind anyway, I have decided to start a new game for now.

[GenerationI]

I believe the problem is in the configuration settings. I still use a virtual memory card (for true emulation), and in recent versions of Dolphin the settings have become very difficult to manage. What worked before doesn't work now even though I did not change the settings. My solution was to:
(1) let the game create a new virtual memory card;
(2) try to find which file it is by checking the creation datetime in Linux;
(3) browse to this and open in it in the Memory Card Manager tool in Dolphin;
(4) import my game save into this.
Unfortunately I always have to browse to the virtual memory card every time I want to import a game save, and I gave up trying to configure it properly in the settings any more in case it breaks again.
(Better make sure that region of the game save and the game are the same too.)
I have tested this in Animal Crossing (GameCube) in Dolphin by importing an old save file from a physical memory card, and it works.