Ever since I upgraded to Kubuntu 11.10, I get an error message on start-up about the "mail dispatcher agent" being unable to send mail. I believe this has something to do with KMail, but I don't use KMail; I use Thunderbird. How can I kill this message... without setting up KMail to replace Thunderbird.

If it is on start-up that is more likely a message for sendmail or procmail being not configured correctly. Kmail or any other GUI mail client would only provoke such a message once you actually try to send something through one of the above mentioned mail agents instead of using a POP or LDAP server. If you do not run your own mail server on your machine you can safely remove either one (sendmail and/or procmail).

On your suggestion, I checked sendmail and procmail: neither are installed. While I was at it, I uninstalled KMail and Kopete, neither of which I use, then I rebooted to see if that helped. Same error message appeared upon logging in:

Mail Dispatcher Agent: Could not access the outbox folder (Unknown error. (Failed to fetch the resource collection.)).

IIRC, this box started with a Kubuntu 10.10 install, on which I have performed distribution upgrades for each release since (11.04, and most recently, 11.10). It is only after 11.10 that these messages started appearing. They appear shortly after I log in, and are not repeated until the next login.

I think you should ask that in Kubuntu, then, or even better, in the Ubuntu forum. I very much doubt this is KDE related, Mail agents are not running in the GUI but in the underlying system, Kmail and Thunderbird are just clients. Kubuntu uses the same underlying system as all Ubuntu does.

OK, thanks for your help!

Same problem..

I tried the solution from http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=669521, and it worked for me.

Just delete the configuration by typing:
Code:

Code: Select all

rm ~/.config/akonadi/*

Akonadi is a storage service for personal information management (PIM) data and metadata. Akonadi communicates with servers to fetch and send data instead of applications through a specialized API. Data can then be retrieved from Akonadi by a model designed to collect a specific data (mail, calendar, contacts, etc.).

Rather than removing the akonadi configuration, I edited ~/.config/akonadi/aknoadiserverrc and changed "StartServer=true" to "StartServer=false", and then rebooted (although logging out and back in should have been sufficient).

That worked for me, thanks. If my French was good enough I'd have a betterunderstanding of why!

Hi,
I had the same problem here, also on a Kubuntu system that has undergone many distribution upgrades.

I found the following solution without having to delete Akonadi's configuration or disabling it completely:
In the "Akonadi configuration" dialog (where you configure the Akonadi ressources), I had an e-mail ressource named "Local Folder". Deleting it made the startup warning go away.

had the same issue after updating to 11.10, after reading this thread, fixing the resources (had a "local folders" resource that had no path) by adding the path to my local-mail folder, restarting the Akonadi server, and viola, no more error message. Thanks all for the help in tracking down the issue.

My solution was a bit rough, follow ajjstone solution it seems the right one. Mine works but of course there is no need to remove completely the akonadi configuration.

good job!

I managed to remove the error message by editing ~/.config/akonati/... and changing true into false as suggested. Great, thanks