For some unknown reason, kmail 1.9.6 on Suse 10.3 started showing "unknown" for "to," "from," and "subject" with no body, for all incoming email. The size was 143 bytes. Examining the raw message I found an error "Failed to open file". This was similar to bug #109154.

I then tried replacing ~/.kde/share/kmail/ from a backup. Same problem. If I sent a test email to myself it came bank in as unknown, etc. I wasn't able to get further in correcting it.

Since at first I thought that these were spam, I ended up about 1 1/2 days of email lost. I then tried to installing kde4 kmail client. That reads email OK, but it won't send. When I click on "send" there is a quick "flash" that indicates something happened, but nothing transmits, and there is no indication of a message sent, nor queued. Some web searching turned up the possibility that problem was that 'libsasl2' was missing. Installing that but still no success.

I would appreciate any suggestions as to how to either 1) fix the older 1.9.6 kmail so that it doesn't convert incoming email into the vast unknown, or 2) how to fix the newer kmail so that it will send.

(In the meantime I'm using Evolution on a laptop.)

Your KMail configuration appears to be corrupt. Assuming you have a full backup ( including hidden files ), it should be possible to repair the configuration. Please ensure your backup is valid first however.

bcooksley,
Thanks, would this be the config file?
/opt/kde3/share/config/kmailrc
It will take a little time, but I have before-failure backup of the total installation, so I should be able un-tar it and get this file.

This is what it currently contains--
deh@P4-1:/opt/kde3/share/config> cat kmailrc
[Geometry]
TotalColumn=-1
UnreadColumn=-1


I had assumed that the config file for Kmail would be somewhere in a subdirectory of ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail, which I had restored from a backup.

The problem is at least partially solved. clamd is the culprit. If I turn off clamd, Kmail 1.9.6 (under kde3) no longer converts incoming email to "totally blank."

It would be nice if clamd at least showed some sort of error in such a case. My current suspicion is that a database file wasn't setup correctly for clamd.

Stopping clamd didn't solve the failure for Kmail 1.9.50 (under kde4) to send. That more likely has to do with missing some supporting routines.

Try removing and re-adding your sending email account, in KMail > Settings > Configure KMail.

bcooksley,

Thanks. I tried the remove/add for the Kmail send account (the kde4 1.9.50 version) and things did not change. My best guess still is with something missing with authentification/login.

Without Klamav the old version works fine. I tried reinstalling Klamav and the problem came back. The problem may have to do with setting up Klamav with the database path, but I haven't looked in to that. It is not all that important that I have the daemon running.

If there is anything like "use local MTA" or something equivalent on that page, please make sure it is not ticked.

bcooksley,

If there is anything like "use local MTA" or something equivalent

No I didn't find anything like that. In the meantime I loaded Suse 11.1 on another partition and kde4/KMail works fine. At this point I plan to stop pursuing the reason kde4/Kmail doesn't send with Suse 10.3.

Thank's for the posts.