In the documentation Creating a staging environment for upgrading Confluence - under #3 Replicate Confluence - step #5 Start Confluence with the following .. where do you edit?
-Datlassian.notifications.disabled=true
-Datlassian.mail.senddisabled=true
Also under #3 Replicate Confluence - My current confluence is a VM, VMware with a Simplivity host. If I were do a restore from a backup turn off the current and power on the restored VM - different name. Could I just edit the confluence-init. properties and the confluence.cfg.xml, edited the base URL, license will be the same, and check system information. Would this work? Of course I would have backed up the DB and restored with another name. But I would still need to stop the send notification from my first question.