I believe the KDE PIM developers themselves use KMail 2, mainly with IMAP. Fixes to various issues going in daily from what I see. Many other fixes were done at a annual sprint as well.

MikaA wrote:I upgraded my work machine to openSUSE 12.1 today and consequently moved to KMail2 as well.

1. Migration. Migration on first run didn't work ("migration failed"). So off I went to look for answers as to how do I get the migration done. Found it, migrated manually which took a couple of hours.

I run Kubuntu and automatic mail migration didn't work for me either.... from reading others posts regarding migration, it just seems to be broken in the 11.10 release. However, after spending some time searching the forums for answers, I did a manual migration which worked without a hitch.

MikaA wrote:2. PAINFUL slowness of everything. When I click on a message I expect it to open "immediately" and not after 5 or 10 or 30 or more seconds of waiting for KMail Folders to "synchronize folder xxx" or said account to synchronize colletion yyy or whatever.

Mine pretty much did that before I re-indexed all the mail folders... However after seeing the performance issues with 'on the fly' indexing, I manually re-indexed all folders and sub-folders (...during a time when I wasn't trying to use the mail system. I run a six processor AMD machine, so it re-indexing really wasn't too bad. YMMV on a slower machine.... Just don't try reading mail while re-indexing or you'll be REAL frustrated.) After re-indexing all the mail folders, everything is running normally.

MikaA wrote:3. Is there anyone on the face of this earth who has Nepomuk and Akonadi and whatnot actually working well?

It seems to be working as advertised here... While there are a few warts (filters not working on mail reception with POP3... some slowness with indexing... etc..) my hats off to the developers for taking a big step up in building an extensible mail system which can handle large amounts of mail rather quickly. I have a pretty large mail store on my machine (some of my active mail lists go back to 1999) and kmail2 seems to retreive every piece of it just as quickly.

Even with the few issues it has, I'm sure it'll only get better with time.

cheers,
Bill

Okay, tried it one more time as your response was so encouraging. But no. I didn't do any migrating, simply created a new IMAP mailbox and watched it fill up. After it settling down I deleted some messages and watched them re-appear at the next mail check.

So, while I might be able to live with the slowness I simply can not live with an email client not being able to delete mail from my mailbox.

On creating the IMAP account it did talk about "IMAP account 5" wanting permission to my keystore or something like that, which suggests that it still remembers all the previous accounts somewhere.. Don't know if that affect this behavior as well.

Hi Mika,

I'm sorry to hear your still having trouble. I don't use IMAP here (only POP3) so it sounds like it could be something specific to IMAP causing your issues. (Perhaps someone else will comment on that who uses IMAP on a regular basis.)


I know that part of my initial problem here was an incomplete migration of kmail when the auto-migration utility tried to run. In order to clean up after it, I did a manual migration. Below are the steps I took in doing the manual migration:

Previous to doing the migration, I made sure I had a good backup of my old email directory (located in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail)

then to migrate I did the following:

First I closed kmail and then stopped akonadi (akonadictl stop)

1) Deleted the akonadi database ("rm -rf ~/.local/share/akonadi" and "rm -rf /.config/akonadi") This got rid of the failed database.

2) Restarted kmail. Then added a new local repository (in Settings>Configure Kmail>Accounts section I did an 'add' then 'maildir'.)

3) Imported my backup emails using 'File>Import Messages', and selected 'import kmail maildirs and folder structure'. I pointed to the top level of my mail structure and everything seemed to import fine including sub-directories.

4) I then added my POP3 accounts back in manually using Settings>Configure Kmail>Accounts. I beleive I also had to add my identities back in too (that was in Settings>Configure Kmail>Identities)

5) Finally I went to each mail inbox listed in the kmail left panel listing and right clicked on each to select it and then selected 'update folder and its subfolders' from the pull down listing in order to rebuild the akonadi indexes (this took the longest... be prepared for a coffee break. )


As an aside to the above procedure, I did read elsewhere that you could try running the auto-migration script interactivly from the command prompt. Its fewer steps and others seemed to have good success rates by doing this.

In order to use the migrator script... here's the recommended procedure:

To do that first do step 1 above, then the following:

delete '~/.kde4/share/config/kmail-migratorrc' and '~/.kde4/share/config/kmail2rc'

Then run "kmail-migrator --interactive"
This should migrate all mails and accounts over to akonadi.

After migrating you'll still need to rebuild the kmail indexes (step 5 above).



As I said earlier, I don't know if this will help in your situation, but it worked for me here. Perhaps it'll at least save someone else the trouble of having to research it all again.

cheers,
Bill

I'm sorry to hear your still having trouble. I don't use IMAP here (only POP3)

And you admit the filters on POP3 accounts do not work. How do you live without filters? Mail client without filters working is a completely broken mail client.

Anixx wrote:

And you admit the filters on POP3 accounts do not work. How do you live without filters? Mail client without filters working is a completely broken mail client.

Oh the filters work fine manually.. just not automatically. I have to manually launch them from the pull down menu once new mail is received in the inbox. An inconvenience, yes... but not a real show stopper in my opinion (YMMV.)

Hopefully the development team will fix that in the next release...

cheers
Bill

Dear kde-forum members,

I am facing much of the problems discussed in the current and as well in the "similar" thread viewtopic.php?f=20&t=97744.

I want to understand why and how corrupted files are "produced" while manipulating folders in Kmail(2). What is the main reason behind? Where could I read stuff to at least have a basic undertanding of the real problem?

After a "clean" migration, or import of mails, is there, a way to keep the "Maildir" clean and valid? Are there actions that a user can avoid?

Another question is if the import of Kmail archives--under Linux, bash--can be done via the command line. It would certainly speed-up things by using just a for loop to get Kmail archives into a new database.

Thanks, Nikos

As far as I am aware, the KMail developers are not aware of any issues that could cause the Maildir structures to become inconsistent. If you find a method which reliably causes the structure to become inconsistent, then please report this at bugs.kde.org.

bcooksley wrote:As far as I am aware, the KMail developers are not aware of any issues that could cause the Maildir structures to become inconsistent. If you find a method which reliably causes the structure to become inconsistent, then please report this at bugs.kde.org.

I am not aware of such a method. However, migrating from Kmail1 to Kmail2 left me with an unusable Kmail2 client. It took me a lot of days to get things back--including losing emails.

So, here is something I did:

1. erased everything, meaning I followed suggestions for a "clean" migration as per http://userbase.kde.org/KMail/FAQs_Hints_and_Tips#Clean_start_after_a_failed_migration

2. importing archived mails (which were exported from inside Kmail2)
- I have to add here that I took a lot of time to clean empty files and remove duplicates (using command line and fslint)
- despite manually cleaning, some "error" messages where popping-up about not possible to import this and that.

3. re-organise thematically mails in folders and sub-folders
- important: in _each_ step of moving, erasing and/or checking for duplicate mails, I applied the Update folder & Update folder and its subfolders function from the menu

4. setting-up an IMAP acount

5. setting filters

Now, from the command line, I check the directory ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory. There exists a dotted directory which should not! As far as I understand, dotted directories are containers for subfolders of non-dotted Kmail(2) folders, right? Well, this specific folder was under Kmails Local Folders (I guess it corresponds to ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory). It _did_ exist but I moved it on another subfolder. Now, why is the dotted directory still there? How could have this been possible? I have never, of course, put anything manually inside .local-mail-directory.

This specific folder is currently the 4rth subfolder inside a main folder. When I click on it, on Kmail, a message appears:

Code: Select all

akonadi_maildir_resource_0: Maildir " for collection " is invalid

Whenever I do Update folder and its subfolders on the parent folder, lots of invalid warnings pop as notifications. If I did something as an end-user, I "misused" Kmail and frequently and intensively worked upon structuring the folders and sub-folders. And filters, of course.

What does this mean? What caused this incosistency? Can I correct it--manually--?

Oh the filters work fine manually.. just not automatically. I have to manually launch them from the pull down menu once new mail is received in the inbox. An inconvenience, yes... but not a real show stopper in my opinion (YMMV.)

Hopefully the development team will fix that in the next release...

For me too, this is not a show-stopper. However, it counts as a great incovenience--having to press 200 times "Apply all filters" is not what computer software is made for...

@NikosAlexandris: In general, the ~/.local/share/local-mail and ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/ structures should not be altered by users directly.

The ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/ folder will contain all sub-folders (including their sub-folders) of ~/.local/share/local-mail/ - which usually represents the structure known as "Local Folders". They are not of the KMail Mail directory type.

bcooksley wrote:@NikosAlexandris: In general, the ~/.local/share/local-mail and ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/ structures should not be altered by users directly.

Right. I did (before I finally started the whole thing from the scratch) erase empty files as well as removed duplicate files (using fslint--sometimes 4, 5, 6 or even 8 times identical files!). Reason was that Kmail was so unresponsive and practically frozen. Anyway, this is not the case anymore after a "clean" migration following the steps in the FAQ-page.

bcooksley wrote:The ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory/ folder will contain all sub-folders (including their sub-folders) of ~/.local/share/local-mail/ - which usually represents the structure known as "Local Folders". They are not of the KMail Mail directory type.

Judging by their contents, they have little to do with each other! The 1st one contains the structure of "Local Folders" plus some "ghost" directories (they should not be there any-more since they are not in the "Local Folders" root, right?). The 2nd contains only three empty directories, the usual suspects: cur, new and tmp.

Anyway, I see a dozen of relatively newly reported potential bugs about Kmail2. Obviously there is something wrong. And I want to try to help a bit. First thing is to understand why? I consider this as important, even if I am not going to contribute any code.

Cheers!

NikosAlexandris wrote:For me too, this is not a show-stopper. However, it counts as a great incovenience--having to press 200 times "Apply all filters" is not what computer software is made for...

You can filter as many messages as you wish with just one inbox operation:

First you need to select all the messages that you wish to apply filters too. (i.e.: left click the first message in the inbox list that you wish to apply filters too... then scroll down to the last message that you wish to apply the filters too and hold down the SHIFT key and left click at the same time. This will select (highlight) all messages between the two selected messages.) Then right click on the selected message block to get the kmail pulldown menu, and then left click apply filters -> apply all filters.

It sure beats doing it once for each message....

cheers
Bill

The three "usual suspects" (cur, tmp, new) are the contents of the top level folder - per the Maildir specification. The .local-mail.directory folder contains the Folders which are inside the Top level folder.

This is per the Maildir specification. If you look carefully inside .local-mail.directory then you will find more hidden (prefixed with .) folders and more folders containing the same cur, tmp and new folders.

bweinel wrote:

NikosAlexandris wrote:For me too, this is not a show-stopper. However, it counts as a great incovenience--having to press 200 times "Apply all filters" is not what computer software is made for...

You can filter as many messages as you wish with just one inbox operation:

First you need to select all the messages that you wish to apply filters too. (i.e.: left click the first message in the inbox list that you wish to apply filters too... then scroll down to the last message that you wish to apply the filters too and hold down the SHIFT key and left click at the same time. This will select (highlight) all messages between the two selected messages.) Then right click on the selected message block to get the kmail pulldown menu, and then left click apply filters -> apply all filters.

It sure beats doing it once for each message....

cheers
Bill

No luck here Bill. Either using Ctrl+A or Selecting all, or just a subset of mails, in the Inbox folder, it only filters one message (the last one I think).