[solved] Kwallet / Kmail / Akonadi failure on MGA6 migration

[varrin]

First off, thank you to all who worked hard to finally produce MGA6. I am looking forward to migrating to it and continuing to use Mageia for the forseeable future. However...

My first attempt to start using MGA6 was ultimately not successful. I was successfully using MGA5 (love it!). However, I did not simply upgrade from 5 using my existing disk, but rather made a clean install on a new drive. Then, I rsynced all of my home directory contents from the old drive to the new drive prior to the first launch of KDE.

The problem that stops me from continuing is that Kmail does not work. In the left pane, I can see a list of my folders and a display of the number of unread emails. In the top right pane, I see the list of messages, which has some information visible (sender, date, subject, etc.). However, the bottom right pane (where the message contents should be displayed) says "Retrieving Folder Contents... please wait" and notification pops up saying "Resource KMail Folders is broken." Attempt to do anything meaningful in KMail results in the "busy" bar (at the bottom right) activating indefinitely.

I believe this may be somehow related to Kwallet not working. When I first booted it asked me to create a new wallet. I vaguely recall something about Kwallet from MGA5, and I somehow made it work without requiring further input from me. On searching the forums here, I discovered that others have had similar problems. I tried copying the kwalletrc file and kdewallet.kwl and kdewallet.salt files to seemingly appropriate locations. Kwallet did appear to find the wallet but nothing I attempted allowed me to open it (wrong password). I do not need to input a password on MGA5, so I'm not sure how to fix that problem now on MGA6.

When I started this process, Akonadi began some oddball indexing process. For an hour or so, it appeared to index some of my mail folders (maybe not all of them?). It has finished that. The Akonadi Console now shows KMail Folders as "Ready" (green light), however, Kmail doesn't seem able to access it. Also, much of my kmail configuration is missing. I tried coping kmail2rc from the kde4 directory to ~/.config and that made no improvement. Notably the message identities are missing (only one empty one remains).

Due to time constraints, I have to go back to MGA5 now to accomplish work. Any tips on getting 6 running correctly (specifically mail) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

V-

[isadora]

Recently i read this topic in our forum:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11977&p=69990&hilit=kwallet#p69990

[varrin]

I had also read that topic and tried the suggestions in there. Those didn't work for me. Copying the kwallet folder to ~/.config did nothing, nor did copying the kwalletrc and kdewallet.kwl files to the places that seemed appropriate for them. I'm back to MGA5 for the time being and will make another attempt in October. In the mean time, if there's something else specific I need to do to make it work, I'm happy to hear about it. I'll probably start over with a reformat and reinstall of both OS and data so any tips that make such a migration more smooth would be greatly appreciated.

V-

[varrin]

I tried again to resolve this problem to no avail. I started over with this sequence of events:

Starting conditions: MGA5 (fully up to date) working. Kwallet, Akonadi, and Kmail all function correctly. Kwallet never asks me for a password.

Procedure:
1: Install MGA6 on a fresh hard drive
2: Copy ~ from MGA5 drive to MGA6 drive
3: Copy kwallet and akonadi config and data files from MGA5 directories to MGA6 directories (variously .kde4/share/config and .kde4/share/apps to .config and .local)
4: Copy kmail config files from MGA5 directories to MGA6 directories (leaving data in .Mail)
5: Start user. Receive kwallet password dialog. No password works.

Subsequently, I rebooted into MGA5, changed my kwallet password, and saved the wallet using a new name. I tried to open that wallet using the new password also to no avail.

What's the secret to getting kwallet working with MGA6? I appear yet to discover it.

Thank you,

V-

[varrin]

Further update...

I haven't fully tested everything, but I have made progress. It's not the way I think progress should have been made, but it's progress anyway. Copied the folders again, and tried a few other workarounds, still to no avail. I booted back to MGA5 and exported the wallet to XML. Booted to MGA6, deleted all the kwallet stuff, created a new wallet, imported the settings from the MGA5 export. Now Kmail at least loads and the folders display. Haven't tried checking mail yet. All the information for sending mail is gone. This doesn't strike me as the way things are supposed to work...

V-

(I'll mark this resolved once I finish testing)

[varrin]

Making Kmail / Akonadi / Kwallet work with a clean MGA6 install and existing MGA5 home directory.

Say you have a MGA5 (or earlier?) install which you want to migrate to MGA6. However, rather than risk the upgrade, you want to make a fresh install on a fresh drive (or at least set of partitions) and copy your data over. You use Kmail and want it to work correctly after the fresh install. Your user name is: user1. After several attempts at this kind of upgrade, here’s what ultimately worked for me.

Before beginning, from your existing MGA5 partition, load kwalletmanager and export your wallet.

Format and Install MGA6 to the new drive. Create user1 with identical UID and GID to user1 on MGA5.

After install, mount your MGA5 home directory (eg using external drive, etc.) and copy it identically to the new home directory (eg: as root, rsync -avh /run/media/yoursourcedrive/user1/ /home/user1/)

After completion, copy the configuration files and some important data according to this table:

Source - MGA5 to Destination - MGA6
.kde4/share/config/akonadi_*_resource_?rc to .config/akonadi_*_resource_?rc
.kde4/share/config/kmail2rc to .config/kmail2rc
.kde4/share/apps/akonadi_migration_agent to .local/share/akonadi_migration_agent
.kde4/share/apps/kmail2/* to .local/share/kmail2/*

I tried copying these files, and numerous other tactics to get my wallet to import, however kwallet5 did not cooperate:

.kde4/share/apps/kwallet/* to .local/share/kwalletd/*
.kde4/share/config/kwalletrc to .config/kwalletrc

If you have similar problems, login to User1. You will be asked to create a new wallet. Name it kdewallet, use blowfish, set the password. Then run the wallet manager and import the data you exported at the beginning of this process. You will have to reauthorize all of the apps (eg every kmail pop account, etc.), however the username/password data should match the akonadi resources and work without further intervention.

Hope that helps someone else out there. The fact that kwallet, akonadi, and kmail didn't simply work (immediately, and even after copying those files) caused me several *days* of lost productivity. If anyone is listening, please note my frustration. I love MGA and have been a long time user (starting with Mandrake in 2003). This one issue caused the MGA 5 to 6 upgrade to be rather painful. The solution should be simple: the OS (and apps) should check for existing configuration and data files in the places where they used to be (eg. the kde4 directories) before giving up or creating new files. And the wallet should migrate. I'm not a programmer, but it shouldn't be this difficult, and when it's this important (breaks the default email app among many other things), it should be a high priority. Thank you for listening [/rant]

V-

P.S. Kmail sending information (SMTP profile, etc.) also disappeared. Less major annoyance, but it was a bit irritating having to input all that again.