Hi,

does anyone actually test the apps and libs before releasing them?

Yes this sounds harsh, but here are is a log about the first 3 hours of (trying) to use kmail 2.1.0:

* first start, trying to migrate the old mails.
had to enter the passord for my 40 imap accounts each one twice.
Why did I set it to store passwords?
took a while but imap stuff worked. my pop email accounts got merged (more or less)
accessing the imap worked, but pop3 fetching does not.
First bug: I cannot enter a pop3 password. Tried in kmail, tried in external control settings.
Behaviour is the same: I got a password field but cannot enter anything. Clicking on the field get to focus and no way to enter password.
Second Bug:
The shown directory structure did not match the old one, tried to move things around, getting rid of duplicate local folder => kmail crashed
after restating, instant critical error, kmail terminates with "resource not found"

ok, killed the kmail2 folders and configs, restored backup.
Second attempt:
reenter passwords, was more careful when moving dirs but the result is the same:
no pop3 passwords, reduced functionality, missing emails, crashing kmail,
empty folders.

Third attempt...
After migrating, cleanup up, entering passwords and so on,
I fiddled with the configs, did some changes here and there and my current status is:

kmail looks stable (longer than 10 minutes...), online imap semi works, reading local stored mail works.
But these things do not:
all suggestions welcome:
* sending mails does not work, settings are fine. kmail put the mail into the outbox, but it stays there, manually sending the queued messages has no effect, no error message as well
* entering pop3 passwords still not possible
* moving/copying a message into an online imap account does not upload the message to the server (it is listed in kmail, even after restart/sync with server)
* delete mails from online imap accounts
* import email signatures from "old" kmail 1.x
* import filters from kmail 1.x (update 1)
* system tray notification of unread messages does not work. I have 1 unread message, systray sais: 0 unread (update 2)


So my first question is valid from my perspective.

Please give some suggestions.
If you need more infos, have some scripts/patches, feel free to append them here or send them via email. I'll use a working email client to fetch them.

Greets Sash

I also can't send ANY mail with kmail 2.1.0. Clicking Send in the composer just puts it into outbox, and using File->Send Queued Messages has no effect whatsoever. The status bar shows no activity. You realize this breaks essential functionality in a way that looks like some seriously stupid implementation oversight?

Update:
these are the 4 current bug reports:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276076: Bug 276076 - cannot enter pop3 password without activated kwallet
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276077:Bug 276077 - unable to send queued message
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276078:Bug 276078 - moving/copying a message into an online imap account does not upload the message to the server
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276079:Bug 276079 - system tray notifaction shows wrong information

When you were removing the configurations did you shut Akonadi down prior to doing so?

Also, did you clear ~/.config/akonadi, ~/.kde4/share/config/akonadi* and ~/.local/share/akonadi when restoring your backups?

yes, I did clean all of those config files up, including all akonadi storage stuff.
Is there any way to get rid of akonadi caching stuff, uses huge amounts of storage without any actual benefits.
Something like using a /dev/null backend instead of mysql or sqlite?
Or use flat files for things like contacts, appointments and so on?
I crashed akonadi a couple of times, loosing all my contacts, appointments, notes and so on.
Really annoying. Backing the files up is not always working. sometimes it
liked the backup, most of the time it did not.
Sorry to say, but KDE 4.x is a huge step back from 3.5 in regards to PIM and a small step back for the remaining part.
Sure the gui looks nicer, some features are nice, but performance, memory usage, hard disc usage and stability got a lot worse from release to release.

Akonadi does use flat files, and as far as I am aware, does not cache data which is stored in local files (at least as far as I am aware). Those resources which are remotely stored (IMAP for email, CalDav, etc for calendars and so forth) will be cached in Akonadi's database however.

If this is not the case, I would probably consider it a bug.

Akonadi can use both database and files for caching data parts and it decides what to do depending on configuration.

in $HOME/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

Code: Select all

[%General]
SizeThreshold=4096
ExternalPayload=true


Instructs Akonadi to use files for caching data that exceeds size of 4096 bytes.

Caches are kept a certain period of time, depending on the containing folder's cache settings (usually preconfigured by the respective resource/backend handler).

Of course this timeout only applies to data that has been claimed by a resource, i.e. either has been delivered by the resource or new data which has been acknowledged by the resource (meaning the resource has written the data to the actual backend).

Cheers,
_

bcooksley wrote:... and as far as I am aware, does not cache data which is stored in local files

Akonadi/Kmail2 is storing the same e-mail (downloaded from POP3-server) on two different places on the local harddisk.
One copy in ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/ and another copy in ~/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/.

See also:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271231
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=94532

POP3 emails are stored in the maildir at ~/.local/share/local-mail or other maildir and mbox locations.

They or parts of them can at some times also be present at cache locations, e.g. ~/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/

Initial cache policies of folders might not be set to ideal values yet, e.g. cache timeout too long or list of data parts to keep cached too encompassing.
The maildir resource for example (which is handling .local/share/local-mail for instance) has recently been fixed in that regard.

Cheers,
_

I just gave kmail2 another try. At least the current version.
This time I had a new Install (a new computer)

Long story short: it Failed totally (again).

Long story:
Fresh install, started akonadi control (via system settings), a lot of duplicated and unneeded resouces popped up.
Removed them and set the paths to my likings. Most important: path to mail to ~/Mail.
Started kmail, showd the local folder with empty mails. so far: all fine.
Added pop3 account and used kwallet until my bug is resolved. (may be one of the reasons it failed).
Downloaded a few new mails, they appeared in the inbox.
Finally some success.
Added some folders, created first filters.
Looked fine until one of my utils scanning the ~/Mail dir told me: no mail there. HUH?
Yup, thats true, I set the dir in the config but no mail there. What is this setting for?
After a grep on the complete ~ dir I found some of the mails in ~/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data, but not all of them.
ok, maybe with the settings above this can be corrected to include all mails there.
Now I was partially lucky.
Now my setup hit me:
My home directory is located on a NFS for various reasons. (like easy backup, share the home over multiple machines when using anyone of them, a.s.o).
Worked wonderful with kmail 1.X / old contact and everything.
But now akonadi is used for everything. After firing up a second computer and without loging out of the first one,
akonadi failed and destroyed its database.
Result: total mail loss, everything pim related was gone.

To quote the SQLite FAQ:
"You should avoid putting SQLite database files on NFS if multiple processes might try to access the file at the same time"
so: No akonadi for me.
Is there a way to get rid of the akonadi db store and save all to files again. And this time not just set it in the config,
but actually use the config settings?
Or in short: restore the kmail 1.X behaviour?

This time I did not try to import my ~25 GB mail archive. Not sure what
would have happend there.

If someone has some suggestions, feel free to post them.

But for now I will stick to kmail 1.x until a new version version is out
which fixes all of my showstopper bugs or my distro drops the old version.
If that happens, I will no longer use kontact/kmail.
But that would be bad, I really liked it (before the akonadi era).

Cheers

SashFFM wrote:Looked fine until one of my utils scanning the ~/Mail dir told me: no mail there. HUH?

On my system POP3-mails are stored in ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/*/new.
There's also an empty directory ~/.local/share/local-mail, I don't know the purpose of this directory.

SashFFM wrote:Looked fine until one of my utils scanning the ~/Mail dir told me: no mail there. HUH?

If you used a maildir resource, they are probably in ~/.Mail.directory (maildir tree structure).

I recommend using the "KMail Folders" resource for working on a KMail mail folder hierachy since it can also deal with mbox folders inside the tree and has read support for KMail's index files.

SashFFM wrote:My home directory is located on a NFS for various reasons. (like easy backup, share the home over multiple machines when using anyone of them, a.s..
Worked wonderful with kmail 1.X / old contact and everything.

Just our of pure luck. KMail never supported running more than one instance (it even makes sure that only one can be started by the same user on the same machine).
Reason for this is that it also needs exclusive access to its index files which it uses to make handling large folders possible, etc.

Cheers,
_

@anda_skoa:
I used the maildir resource, gave it the path to ~/Mail and it did not use it.
Maybe this is already fixed in the development tree.
I don't want to use svn/git/whatever checkout on a system where I need a working mail app (at least not until my other showstopper bugs are fixed).
That why I downgraded it to a working version.

In fact the warning of kmail saved me some times where I could see that I fogot to log out on the other computer.
But since akonadi stuff starts during login without any checks => data corruption without warning.

I never had multiple Instances of kmail running and never wanted to. It just sometimes happend by accident. It got detected so kmail 1.X storage vs. akonadi 1:0.

People who are affected by mails staying in the outbox while kmail doesn't even try to send them:

Have you by any chance been using NetworkManager?

When I switched to KMail 2, I was using NetworkManager and all was fine. Then I stopped using NetworkManager (just initscripts) and KMail wouldn't send mail any more. Then when I started using NetworkManager again a few weeks later, upon connecting to the internet I immediately got the KWallet popup from Akonadi which was trying to send my mail. Right now I'm online with Networkmanager and I can send mail just fine. Not sure though if this is now a bug in Akonadi or in NetworkManager...

This will likely be a bug in either Akonadi or Solid. Solid is responsible for communicating with NetworkManager.

When NetworkManager determines that your system is connected to a network, your computer's status is set to "Online" which triggers Akonadi to connect to remote resources such as SMTP, IMAP and POP servers.

When NetworkManager is not available, the status is supposed to be set to "Unknown", in which case applications cannot make any assumptions about the systems connectivity, and should try anyway. It is possible that either Akonadi is not trying in the case of connectivity being Unknown, NetworkManager is still running - despite being virtually disabled or the behaviour of Solid/Akonadi in KDE 4.7 and later has changed, causing this regression.