Discussion:
kde 4.11.2, akonadi & Kmail2 problems (retrieving folder contents please wait)
Alexander Puchmayr
2013-12-25 08:41:25 UTC
Permalink
Hi there,

On Monday I upgraded from kde-4.10.5 to kde-4.11.2 (the latest release marked
as 'amd64' on gentoo), but I had serious problems with kmail2:

* I could not open any of my mail, kmail is always showing "Retrieving folder
contents please wait". Didn't show up after more than one hour.

* some akonadi process, kontact and mysqld kept more than two CPUS permanently
busy.

Consequently, I haven't been able to read my mail :-(

I tried:
* Restarting the akonadi resource for my local mailbox. No effekt.
* Re-creating the databases by moving ~.local/share/akonadi to akonadi.orig
Akonadi recreated its database successfully, but at the end the same result.
* Akonadi-console: The debugger shows so many entries per second that I could
barely read them. Frequent hangs for a couple of minutes (thought it died, so
I killed it, but then I saw it just had a very large timeout)

Then I had to restore 4.10.5 from the backup.

Now, some of my mail folders got messed up (Mails moved into wrong folders)
Filters are messed up (rules to move to specific folders suddenyl point to
different folders -- that explains the mails in wrong folders ... )

Is there a way to re-initialize akonadi without risking to lose data and
without having to recreate each and every rule I made?

Best regards
Alex
Mick
2013-12-25 14:19:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alexander Puchmayr
Hi there,
On Monday I upgraded from kde-4.10.5 to kde-4.11.2 (the latest release
* I could not open any of my mail, kmail is always showing "Retrieving
folder contents please wait". Didn't show up after more than one hour.
* some akonadi process, kontact and mysqld kept more than two CPUS
permanently busy.
Consequently, I haven't been able to read my mail :-(
* Restarting the akonadi resource for my local mailbox. No effekt.
* Re-creating the databases by moving ~.local/share/akonadi to akonadi.orig
Akonadi recreated its database successfully, but at the end the same
result. * Akonadi-console: The debugger shows so many entries per second
that I could barely read them. Frequent hangs for a couple of minutes
(thought it died, so I killed it, but then I saw it just had a very large
timeout)
Then I had to restore 4.10.5 from the backup.
Now, some of my mail folders got messed up (Mails moved into wrong folders)
Filters are messed up (rules to move to specific folders suddenyl point to
different folders -- that explains the mails in wrong folders ... )
Is there a way to re-initialize akonadi without risking to lose data and
without having to recreate each and every rule I made?
Best regards
Alex
I really sympathise with you Alex because I have been through similar pains
myself on one of my machines. That was enough of a lesson for me not to allow
this piece of ... to mess up any other boxen. I'm still on kmail-1.13.7 and
having thoughts of migrating to T'bird.

The only way I know of is to restore your akonadi from a back up and if need
be your mail folder structure also from a backup. Now if this problem was
propagated to your mail server (assuming you run IMAP4) then you'll need to
restore the mail server from a back up.

All this database integration by the KDE team has brought some catastrophic
failures even to devs PCs and they have spared some of us from similar pain
when they advised that we mask any kde-base/kmail >4.4.11.1-r1. Bitrot is
setting in though, so I am not sure how long it may take before I have to move
on to a different mail client after the best part of 10 years using kmail.
--
Regards,
Mick
Alan McKinnon
2013-12-26 12:02:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mick
I really sympathise with you Alex because I have been through similar pains
myself on one of my machines. That was enough of a lesson for me not to allow
this piece of ... to mess up any other boxen. I'm still on kmail-1.13.7 and
having thoughts of migrating to T'bird.
+1

I ran into this too in the kde-4.4 era (when kmail2 was showing first
signs of being releasable) and I honestly have not seen any signs since
that the kmail devs have any clue at all. This mailing list has many
stories of folks experiencing data loss when they just follow the
instructions.

Nowadays I use Tbird and all issues just go away.

It's unbelievable the chaos kamil2 can inflict on a system, and the
worst is that everything they do is a complete 100% already-solved
system, there's nothing new in it - it does mail and contacts plus a few
other bits! Classic case of 2nd major project syndrome (read mythical
man Month if you don't get the reference)
--
Alan McKinnon
***@gmail.com
Mick
2013-12-26 13:16:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan McKinnon
Post by Mick
I really sympathise with you Alex because I have been through similar
pains myself on one of my machines. That was enough of a lesson for me
not to allow this piece of ... to mess up any other boxen. I'm still on
kmail-1.13.7 and having thoughts of migrating to T'bird.
+1
I ran into this too in the kde-4.4 era (when kmail2 was showing first
signs of being releasable) and I honestly have not seen any signs since
that the kmail devs have any clue at all. This mailing list has many
stories of folks experiencing data loss when they just follow the
instructions.
Nowadays I use Tbird and all issues just go away.
It's unbelievable the chaos kamil2 can inflict on a system, and the
worst is that everything they do is a complete 100% already-solved
system, there's nothing new in it - it does mail and contacts plus a few
other bits! Classic case of 2nd major project syndrome (read mythical
man Month if you don't get the reference)
I don't know to what extend the concept of 'Google for the desktop' at the
hey-days of Web 2.0 made devs think that running a mysql database on a desktop
machine to store meta-tags on everything a user possessed was a 'great idea!'
Perhaps there are users who decide to click on the desktop to search for their
files, emails, contacts and what not to justify taking the desktop development
in this direction. None of the people I know do this, nor do I. Until
Alzheimer's sets in I tend to use my brain to search and find things, where I
have placed them contextually within my cognitive map. So far this works fine
for me - well, most of the time. :p So clearly the bloatware direction taken
by the KDE devs is not suitable for me and my immediate needs and that's one
of the reasons I use Enlightenment.

Irrespective of this, the functionality of semantic desktop search, when I
tried it, drove me insane (e.g. it would launch Skype to dial the telephone
number of on of my address book contacts I searched on, instead of creating a
new mail message).

Now, if I can only wean myself off kmail-1 before it is removed from portage
...
--
Regards,
Mick
Alexander Puchmayr
2013-12-26 19:15:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan McKinnon
+1
I ran into this too in the kde-4.4 era (when kmail2 was showing first
signs of being releasable) and I honestly have not seen any signs since
that the kmail devs have any clue at all. This mailing list has many
stories of folks experiencing data loss when they just follow the
instructions.
I know, and I think one of them was mine ...
However, I always were able to fix it in away so I could live with it, but if a
piece of software does not allow you to do what it is ment to do, it becomes a
useless waste of bytes. So I had to restore from backup, which showed me two
things:
1) My backup works (yeah !!)
2) I should have restored *all* user data as well, because:

akonadi's mail filter agent stores in its config only a numerical id of a
directory where to put the filtered mails to ('Move to folder') instead of its
name. When recreating the database, it messed up these numbers, so the filters
put the mail into the wrong folders. Hence, it *requires* that both the fiter-
configfile *and* the database must be kept *syncronous*. Unless you have a
database+filesystem which can handle modifications in one *single* transaction,
this is IMHO a bad idea, and AFAIK no such combination exists so far.
Post by Alan McKinnon
Nowadays I use Tbird and all issues just go away.
I tried Tbird as well, but it has also serious problems keeping the folders
synchronized. See my next mail I'm writing to this forum.
Post by Alan McKinnon
It's unbelievable the chaos kamil2 can inflict on a system, and the
worst is that everything they do is a complete 100% already-solved
system, there's nothing new in it - it does mail and contacts plus a few
other bits! Classic case of 2nd major project syndrome (read mythical
man Month if you don't get the reference)
Well, I think the idea behind akonadi is not that bad, but some times I have
the impression that the implementation is either incomplete or buggy or highly
inefficient.
Alexander Puchmayr
2013-12-26 16:50:32 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan McKinnon
+1
I ran into this too in the kde-4.4 era (when kmail2 was showing first
signs of being releasable) and I honestly have not seen any signs since
that the kmail devs have any clue at all. This mailing list has many
stories of folks experiencing data loss when they just follow the
instructions.
I know, and I think one of them was mine ...
However, I always were able to fix it in away so I could live with it, but if a
piece of software does not allow you to do what it is ment to do, it becomes a
useless waste of bytes. So I had to restore from backup, which showed me two
things:
1) My backup works (yeah !!)
2) I should have restored *all* user data as well, because:

akonadi's mail filter agent stores in its config only a numerical id of a
directory where to put the filtered mails to ('Move to folder') instead of its
name. When recreating the database, it messed up these numbers, so the filters
put the mail into the wrong folders. Hence, it *requires* that both the fiter-
configfile *and* the database must be kept *syncronous*. Unless you have a
database+filesystem which can handle modifications in one *single* transaction,
this is IMHO a bad idea, and AFAIK no such combination exists so far.
Post by Alan McKinnon
Nowadays I use Tbird and all issues just go away.
I tried Tbird as well, but it has also serious problems keeping the folders
synchronized. See my next mail I'm writing to this forum.
Post by Alan McKinnon
It's unbelievable the chaos kamil2 can inflict on a system, and the
worst is that everything they do is a complete 100% already-solved
system, there's nothing new in it - it does mail and contacts plus a few
other bits! Classic case of 2nd major project syndrome (read mythical
man Month if you don't get the reference)
Well, I think the idea behind akonadi is not that bad, but some times I have
the impression that the implementation is either incomplete or buggy or highly
inefficient.

Loading...