Re: [gentoo-user] Massive kmail breakage with mariadb-10.4.6

[Mick]

On Saturday, 22 June 2019 10:07:46 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Hello lists,
>
> Yesterday's routine update took mariadb from 10.3.16 to 10.4.6. When I came
> to look at my emails today, kmail couldn't do anything. To start with, it
> was stuck in an endless, looping attempt to display the current email. Then
> it couldn't archive the inbox, then it couldn't import from an archive. I
> couldn't even move an email from one folder to another. Akonadictl fsck and
> vacuum seemed to run but didn't improve anything. Even reverting to an old
> copy of my home directory didn't help.
>
> Eventually I noticed that mariadb had been upgraded, so I masked the latest
> version and reverted to the older one. Lo! and Behold! Kmail sprang back
> into life.
>
> I've sent this to both the relevant lists; I hope that's not a heinous
> transgression.

Perhaps mariadb-10.4.6 has had some major code changes which make it 
incompatible with the 10.3.16 database structures, although you wouldn't 
expect the level of breakage you're describing happening on a minor version 
update.

Usually this incantation works:

pkill kmail
akonadictl stop
akonadictl start
akonadictl fsck
akonadictl vacuum

with a reasonable waiting time between each step to make sure the command has 
finished processing the db files.  If the db itself has been corrupted badly 
(as it can happen on a ropey fs) then deleting and recreating the affected 
akonadi resource may be a better option.

Did you try removing the akonadi resource, then recreating it and waiting for 
mariadb to re-index the contents of your emails/contacts/notes/what-ever?

When things go awry on a system using btrfs and no mirror, this is my nuclear 
option to restore a working kdepim.

PS. One of these days I will try to educate myself better on recovering from 
btrfs corruption (or more likely reformat the fs to ext4 and forget about it). 
;-)

-- 
Regards,
Mick