Hello all,
since the kmail2 'upgrade' proved a complete disaster (*) I want to move away from it. The question is: how do I keep my local messages ?
- there is no 'export' function in kmail2
- I haven't found a mail program that can import a kmail store
- some post somewhere said to create an mbox folder and dump all messages into it, but if that option did exist in kmail, it seems gone from kmail2.

Since I am on IMAP, I though about simply moving my local folders under the IMAP inbox. I did it on 2 folders: one worked and the other one lost all the messages. But when I open thunderbird I see neither. Moving that folder back under Local... lost all the messages. Arghhh!!! What a nightmare.

HELP!!!

(*) I've posted about it in various forums and there hasn't been a single solution to the various problems: lost messages during migration, constant 'duplicate message' popup when new messages come in, impossible to delete messages from inbox, filters working randomly, no search whatsoever...

And it's not just the fault of the migration, on another machine I did a clean install and it works almost as badly.

First step is for you to check under ~/.local/share/local-mail and ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/ to see if your email still exists.

It appears that your system's Akonadi setup is in a inconsistent state.

Both the /home/dargaud/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/Admin and .../Concordia folders seem to contain messages. But nothing shows in kmail. Admin is under the IMAP inbox and I've moved back Concordia under the Local Folders.

How come the first one doesn't show in Thunderbird since it's now an IMAP folder ? I mean, if I move a folder from local to IMAP, then the messages should not longer be on the local machine, right ?

I'm afraid to experiment more: I did have a backup but it's now over a month old as that's when my system upgraded kmail (without giving me a choice) and everything's been **** since then.

When I installed Fedora 16 I got Kmail2. The migration said it worked but I had nothing but empty folders with no messages.

This is how to solve the problem until they get Kmail working again.
I installed vmplayer (free from vmware).
I then installed Fedora 14 on the virtual machine.
Next install KDE.
Move all the files from folder .kde to your home group on the virtual machine.
Start kmail and all your folders and messages will be there.
I have used this method for a couple months. The biggest problem is backup. I created folder which I export in NFS. From the virtual machine I mount the NFS directory and copy my .kde files into it. Then on the host machine I copy the .kde files from the NFS directory to .kde in my home group.

ddan

ddan, I don't understand the point of your solution. Do you mean that you run kmail1 on another system (which happens to be in the VM) ? I didn't think kmail1 was retro-compatible with kmail2 once the email store has been converted. Anyway, since the folders contain but don't show any messages already, I'd be surprised if it worked.

Please right click the top most folders in KMail one by one and select "Update folder and it's sub folders" to see if that has any impact.

Dargaud,

VM stands for virtual machine. You can have another OS running on top of your current OS. For example you could run Windows 7 in VM at the same time you are running linux. In may case I run an older version of Fedora which doesn't have kmail2. This is on the same machine and both versions are running at the same time. You didn't lose your kmail1 emails, there is still a kmail folder with all your emails. If you have been using kmail2 to receive new email then you will have to sync things up with kmail1.

This is not as hard as it may sound, I would be glad to help setup it if your interested off this forum.

Bcooksley,

Yes, I did do the "Update folder and it's sub folders". It had no effect.

Everyone,

I would like to compile KDE (a version without kmail2) on Fedora 16. It seems a bit too complicated for me. If someone could compile it for me, I'll post the files to my website. I'll of course give you credit for compiling KDE.

Admin,

My above offer really should be done by the KDE team since they posted an unusable kmail2.

ddan

I'll note that KDE is made up of a series of applications - which do not all need to be built. KMail/Kontact/KAddressBook can be skipped in this same manner.

Hello,

I also had the same problems with KMail2. I manage to migrate my entire mailbox of +130,000 messages, but it was manual work.

I made a copy of my entire mailbox directory and later used Import functionality in KMail2. To be precise I used Import messages and KMail directory structure and pointed to my backup copy. The KMail2 then imported the all my mails.

But after that I had exact same problems with multiplying messages that I could not delete from inbox. I ended up deleting the messages from the inbox directory, which helped.

I experienced also constant problems with Akonadi server (or one of its processes) crashing when moving messages from one dir to another.

My suggestion is: move to KDE4.8.0. It is much more stable.

Also a tip: go to the top folder and disable ANY synchronization, not even when you highlight the folder. Otherwise, each time you start you KMail with thousand of mails, like me, the akonadi will attempt to synchronize content and it takes a few minutes each time.

Greetings,

We are now up to KDE 4.8.3 and still no working kmail. The vmware solution as far as I know it the only working solution. This also fixes many other problems such as kaddressbook. I would recommend that this solution be made a sticky note.

ddan

Maybe it is a good idea to face-lift old kmail1 in kde 4.9.0 and forgot about all those problems with kmail2? Maybe some clever programmers will leave kmail2 team and will re-develop what used to work - kmail1 in full glory - so we could have an option like community-oriented LibreOffice and programmers-own-group-oriented Open Office?

Maybe it will be LibreKmail?

Most of popular Linux Magazine says in the tests:
Kmail - Avoid at all costs. What a nightmare.
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... cleContent

Unfortunately I have migrated into kmail2 - search doesn't work, segafault every 10 minutes (4.8.3), the problem is I have no idea how to migrate into eg. thunderbird now, as everything is located into database...

Hi Xywa, I could agree with you that the easiest solution is to turn back to kmail1, but the whole problem might have some deeper context. I added some remarks in another part of this forum: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=102481
For me the question arises how was it possible that nobody from KDE programmers team ever noticed that the whole aconadi concept is an obvious negation of well known rules of proper programming.
Am I wrong that the peacefull coexistence with the corporate world is a naive idea ?

If there is some foundrasing going on, count me in. i simply can't life with kmail2 anymore. Just now it decided to magically duplicate hundreds of mails. The "Remove duplicate emails" tool not only doesn't work, it doesn't even give an error message, or anything indicating that something is connected to that menu entry. Right clicking a folder in kmail has a good chance of producing that flickering menu that is unusable because it flickers so much.. really.. i don't believe anybody is really using kmail2 every day, there is just no chance that its possible (actually i do, and i slowly go crazy doing so)

Kmail is unusable dot
It was and it is the worst application in the whole PIM family, which also isn't a shining example for OSS.
Too complicate for the average user, instable and the additional pain of the akonadi hell.
Please never show anyone interested in KDE any pim application. He will run away screaming.
I prefer reading my mails on my mobile and maybe one day I'll move to Thunderbird.

m0nk

Just some words of caution, after similar experiences I decided to use Evolution, it works mostly, but crashes from time to time as well. Ahh I thought I would just use Thunderbird, it took hours to export and import one of my mail boxes that had only 177 messages in. But once done I thought all would be fantastic... ohhh boy .. was I wrong, Thunderbird is so slow its not really usable, its terrible.

So in my conclusion evolution looks to be the best email client I can find out there, this is sad as kmail1 was great apart from not being able to reply and work with html messages when needed, and yes there are times when its needed. Anyone know of any good email clients for Linux ? I feel sure that akonadi is the root cause of all this _