Re: [gentoo-user] The mess that's called KDEPIM 4.7 ...

[Mick]

On Friday 30 Dec 2011 13:02:33 Alex Schuster wrote:
> Mick writes:

> > The auto-migration did not work.  It only worked partially for some mail
> > account settings, but did not leave behind a workable system, with half
> > the account settings missing.
>
> I had a problem with mysql stuff missing, so Akonadi did not start and
> the migration failed. I had to add the mysql USE flag to x11-libs/qt-sql.

I am not using mysql.  I use sqlite3 which the KDE devs say it's not up to the 
job (can't handle the multi-threaded-access/read/write that mysql does).  So I 
have the sqlite USE flag enabled.  Akonadi and nepomuk started but never 
managed the migration.  No sqlite errors on the terminal that I started kmail 
from.

BTW, this is not a suggestion to use sqlite!  If you are happy to run a full 
blown mysql database on a desktop machine carry on with mysql or postgress.  I 
use mysql on a production box, because it's already running mysql for some 
other apps.  However, on this old laptop I'm using sqlite because this is an 
asthmatic PIII laptop with rather limited resources.  I don't need/want 
desktop semantic tagging, GUI search, or any of the new KDE design philosophy 
features and functions (find and egrep have served me nicely for years now, 
thank you).  Kmail 3.5 was fine, stable and relatively light footed.  It met 
perfectly my needs.  :-(


> > The kmail-migrator --interactive also did not work.
>
> It refuses to start again with an already existing kmailrc.

You will need to restart the migration process.  For this you will need to 
shut down nepomuk and akonadi.  Then remove their respective config and db 
files.  Then restart them and fire up kmail afresh.  You'll have to be patient 
though, assuming the migration starts correctly this time.  Read more here:

http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi_4.4/Troubleshooting

If not, then remove their files all the same, restart them and proceed to 
importing the mail directories from your Mail one at a time.

They are usually imported in a kmail-import.0 type of folder.  You can rename 
that, or select any subfolders and move them where you want them.

On every such physical move you will have to be patient.  Small subfolders 
will move and the akonadi with resync its tables within a few seconds, but 
larger folders with thousands of messages will take ages to complete.

After the whole import, sync, move, sync process has completed things will 
move smoother (only a few seconds delay when you open or access a large 
folder).


> > I had to change the location pointing to the local mail folders - I keep
> > mine under ~/Mail.  Then after pressing F5 on each folder akonadi
> > scanned the respective mail directory and my stored messages showed up!
> > :-)
>
> You're lucky. I created a 'KMail Maildir' resource for the mail folder
> that was used with KMail1 in KDE 3.5, and while the folder structure is
> imported, I see no mails. Akonadi says it is syncing the folder I
> clicked at, but it never finishes. When I drop a mail into a folder
> (this workaround had been suggested to my on the KDE mailing list when I
> did my own migration (and it worked)), I only see this mail, others
> still do not show up.

This is a game of patience.  It helps if you imagine sloooowly ringing the 
neck of those devs who released this half baked piece of C.R.A.P. on us.  
(Cannot Retail at Any Price).

I suggest you try one move at a time and then wait until it finishes.  
Completely.


> Then I created a 'Maildir' resource. Some folders sync, but nothing
> happens when I select the inbox. I restarted Akonadi, now there are some
> 13,000 thousand mails in the inbox, and I can view them. The other
> folders get populated after pressing F5, but it takes long until they
> are actually shown. And switching the folders takes some seconds.

Yes, there may be a couple of seconds delay between large folders, when kmail 
first starts.  Fewer seconds lag after the first time.


> So I started moving folders from the 'Maildir' resource to the default
> 'Local Folders' Resource. Rather than simply changing the 'Local
> Folders' resource path to the Works, but the inbox has some 40,000
> mails, and after over one hour only 4000 were copied to their
> destination, so I logged out.
> The next login, mysqld again eats 150 percent of the three CPU  cores,
> and two akonadi_agent processes take another 100, the migration is still
> happening. At a rate of < 100 Mails per minute. So it will probably take
>  more than 7 hours until it's complete. I do not even know how to abort
> this. I deleted the 'Maildir' resource, and the 'Local Folders'
> resource, logged out an in again, and had to kill the mysqld process.
> The 'Local Folders' resource is being recreated automatically by KMail2
> I guess, finally I pointed its directory to the original Mail directory,
> and things start to work. At least KDEPIM stuff, the rest of KDE still
> has its problems.

Not all of my maildir ~/Mail folders were picked up.  I had to import these 
manually as recommended in the Gentoo guide for the migration.


> > The migration of the email account Settings was even less successful.
> > The settings for Sending transferred across, but the account settings
> > for Receiving did not survive.  Well, let me be more precise here.  They
> > did survive, as they were all still in the kmailrc file.  I checked this
> > against a back up.  No matter, they didn't show up under accounts.
>
> Nothing of this has been auto-migrated here.
>
> > The IMAP4 accounts were less of a success however.  I recreated them from
> > scratch, but no messages showed up under Inbox.  Sent and Trash work
> > fine.
>
> At least this is working.
>
> > Having ran out of time I was wondering if you came across such breakages
> > and if so how did you fix them.
>
> Personally, I have switched to Claws. It has its own issues, but that's
> nothing compared to KMail2. But my sister is used to KMail, and so I try
> to make it work for her.

I recommend that you mask KDEPIM-4.7 with the packages kindly offered by the 
gentoo devs:  http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/kde/kdepim-4.7-mask.txt

I've upgraded KDE on two boxen, but masked KDEPIM-4.7 as recommended and had 
no problems so far.


> > For now I have masked KDEPIM 4.7 on all of my remaining boxen.  This is
> > too messy to have to fix more than once, if I can fix it at all that is!
> >
> > The only thing that's keeping me from mutt is the zillion shortcut
> > commands that I need to learn ... old dog/new tricks and all that.
>
> Claws is okay, except that it does not work with maildirs, the is some
> import script or something to convert this to mbox format.
> Thunderbird also is a decent mail program.

I have tried Claws (although I did not like mbox) and found myself cursing 
after every other key press.  I also tried T'bird and found it better than 
Claws, but worse than Kmail.  It's not just keyboard short cuts, but also how 
it integrates with the address book, pgp and s/mime, etc.

I started looking into getting used to mutt again.  Not sure how I can modify 
its shortcuts, because some them are not intuitive enough for me and some are 
duplicated/redundant.
-- 
Regards,
Mick