charlieapples,

have a gander at http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=86653 I am admittedly clutching at straws here 'cos I don't know nowt about akonadi and the documentation is, as you kindly stated, not so good.

However, it should get your mysql up and running and who knows, maybe the smell of old socks will disappear automagically after that...

toad,

Thanks! It still doesn't work, but I've got the mysql server up and running, so I can't be far off. To the rest of you fellow travelers, as soon as I crack this nut, I'll tell you how I did it.

Solved it
In the rare but possible event that anyone encounters the same baffling blankness, I'll give a brief explanation

I was using an NTFS home partition (so that I could share it with my Windoze install). The arch ntfs-3g utility used to mount such partitions needs instructions in fsab for to how to simulate file permissions. I had correctly set it up to mount /home as belonging to group 'users' but made a typo in the uid option, which should have been me. So I seemed to own my /home, but the user would revert to root in newly created files. Crazy that I did not notice it (I could still create and delete files) but once fixed, Akonadi was able to work normally.

Lesson: if programmes start behaving abnormally, think back to whatever might be abnormal about your system.

Hehe - we've all done something similar at one time or another. We call it pebcak - problem existing between chair and keyboard I do tend to suspect that first - I seem particularly good at pebcaks

bcooksley wrote:On my system, $XDG_DATA_DIRS is set as follows

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ben@grace:~/Download> echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS
/opt/trunk-kde/extras/share:/opt/trunk-kde/kde/share:

The akonadi-env-set.sh script is supposed to be created in the location specified. Precisely it should be created in $(kde4-config --localprefix)/env/. A logout is required to activate its effects.

A check to see if Akonadi was functional on my system from a completely clean start ( remove ~/.local/share/akonadi, ~/.config/akonadi, replacing only ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc so it connects to an external instance ) works fine...

I do not have the file akonadi-env-set.sh on my system - Kubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10, KDE 4.4.1. You say this script "is supposed to be created" but by what or what process? You are running openSuse, I'm running Kubuntu. You appear to be running a developers version of KDE (/opt/trunk-kde/) and I'm running KDE 4.4.1.

This is all very frustrating. I have a standard installation of Kubuntu Karmic 9.10. It was not and upgrade from Kubuntu Jaunty 9.04. It has been properly dist-upgraded using apt-get. KDE was upgraded from the initial version packages with Kubuntu Karmic 9.10. I have deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/beta/ubuntu karmic main active in my repositories.

Nothing suggested so far in this thread has resulted in akonadi server starting without errors.

I still get the error on Test 4:

Test 4: ERROR
--------

MySQL server log contains errors.
Details: The MySQL server error log file &apos;<a href='/home/paul/.local/share/
akonadi/db_data/mysql.err'>/home/paul/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/mysql.err</a>
&apos; contains errors.

File content of '/home/paul/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/mysql.err':
100313 8:35:51 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
100313 8:35:52 InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 323710
100313 8:35:52 [Warning] Can't open and lock time zone table: Table 'mysql.time
_zone_leap_second' doesn't exist trying to live without them
100313 8:35:52 [ERROR] Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.serve
rs' doesn't exist
100313 8:35:52 [ERROR] Cannot open mysql.db
100313 8:35:52 [ERROR] Cannot open mysql.user
100313 8:35:52 [ERROR] Cannot open mysql.event
100313 8:35:52 [ERROR] Event Scheduler: An error occurred when initializing sys
tem tables.
100313 8:35:52 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi: ready for connections.
Version: '5.1.37-1ubuntu5-log' socket: '/home/paul/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc
/mysql.socket' port: 0 (Ubuntu)

and on Test 14.

When Test 14 errors, I have no access to Contacts. When this happens, I close/quit Kontact and then restart Kontact. If I then run the server configuration test, Test 14 succeeds.

Something has to be wrong with how akonadi was packaged or how it was installed, but what? Akonadi should start when applications associated with it are launched, and start without errors. That I can 'correct' the one error (Test 14) by quiting Kontact and restarting it is a kluge and should not have to be performed.

What is the real solution to this? Somebody has to know what is going on and how to fix it.

I wonder ...

Earlier in this thread, it was pointed out that one needed to copy the /etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf into ~/.local/share/akonadi or ~/.config/akonadi (sorry, don't remember which, but I did do this 'per the guidance').

The ~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf file gets created if it does not exist - I tested this. So, that means:

/etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf
~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf
~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf

are exactly them same except for one single line:

#sql_mode=strict_trans_tables

which, as show above, is commented in /etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf and uncommented in the other two.

I have to believe, that somehow, this is the crux of the problem. These three configuration files are apparently required, but I can't believe that they are supposed to contain exactly the same content, except for the single, uncommented line.

Comments?

Hello Snowhog

I was not hit by any major akonadi related disasters. Here my info re those files fwiw:

/etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf - doesn't exist on my system
~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf - appears to be what the name suggests, reasonably lengthy
~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf - mine only has one line: "user=toad"

FWIW, in my Fedora system, the line is commented in both /etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf
and ~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf. ~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf doesn't exist at all.

Hmm. Toad, running Arch "...was not hit by any major akonadi related disasters." and on his system:

/etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf - doesn't exist on my system
~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf - appears to be what the name suggests, reasonably lengthy
~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf - mine only has one line: "user=toad"

annew, running Fedora "...the line is commented in both /etc/akonadi/mysql-global.conf
and ~/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf" and "~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf doesn't exist at all."

Will some knowledgeable member who is running Kubuntu Karmic 9.10, on kernel 2.6.31-20-generic, running KDE 4.4.1, who is having no problems with akonadi - it launches every time without reporting any errors - please chime in here? I'd especially like to know if they have these configuration files (or which ones they don't have), and what's in them.

Like the X-Files, "The answer is out there" - it has to be.

The ~/.kde/Autostart/akonadi-env-set.sh file does not ship with KDE. You are supposed to create it and fill it with the needed contents, namely:

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export XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS

Correct, I build ( pretty much every day ) from KDE Trunk.

The problem in all cases is that for a variety of reasons, the "mysql" database, upon which MySQL itself depends upon for storage of certain information isn't created.

Making sure AppArmor is disabled will certainly help, as it can interfere in ways that may not have been compensated for by the Kubuntu packagers.

You have got to be kidding! But, I know you are not. How can what you appear to imply is a 'critical' component, not be included in KDE? How is anyone supposed to know this? This is the KDE Community Forums - has this bit of information been provided to the developers of KDE!?

No, that file is only needed *if* for some reason XDG_DATA_DIRS contains incorrect information, which as a result causes Akonadi to fail to find its agents.

It is not recommended by the developers, it is your distributions responsibility if they have an unusual configuration to set that variable on a system wide basis.