kmail stops checking

[jiml8]

I have a situation appearing periodically where kmail checks my pop server and for whatever reason cannot contact it.

It then throws up requesters telling me it cannot reach the mail server, and stops checking until I click away the requester.

This behavior is highly undesirable. What I want to see is what used to happen (sigh!...for the good old days when this stuff just worked...). It would fail to contact the server, then would try again later.

Now, I do believe that akonadi is actually what is contacting the server, not kmail. But I am not certain of this. And I don't know how to change the behavior, or even if I can change the behavior.

Does anyone here know how to change that behavior? Perhaps there is a setting someplace that I have not found. If the behavior can't be changed, will evolution or any other client behave the way I want it to?

[ChuangTzu]

Have you tried launching kmail from terminal and watch what errors/warnings pop up? Often times running a program from terminal will at least hint at the problem if not shine a spotlight on it.

PS: copy and paste any errors with code tags.

[doktor5000]

You can run akonadiconsole, it should have a debug tab to show what's going on. But that only shows communication between akonadi server and clients, which won't help you.

Maybe you can create debug logfiles the same way for POP as described for IMAP, but I've not found any occurence of something like that for POP:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.users.pim/21856 or here: https://techbase.kde.org/KDE_PIM/Akonadi/Debug_IMAP

[jiml8]

Exactly why kmail is intermittently not connecting with the pop server is of no particular interest to me. It is located in another state, through several routers, and lots of things can happen to communications enroute.

What I want is for those stupid popups that tell me it failed to communicate to go away, and to have kmail try again a few minutes later.

Those popups are blocking. I want that to stop.

[Gelsenbury]

There is a setting for "Error while checking mail" under System Settings / Notifications / KMail. It seems to default to a pop-up box. Does unchecking this option lead to the desired behaviour?

[jiml8]

That setting certainly does look promising. Thanks. I had looked all over kmail to find a setting. It had not occurred to me that it would be in system settings.

I have unchecked it. Now I will just wait and see if emails arrive without incident for the next few days.

Having that capability blocked until I click away the requester is absolutely unacceptable to me; it ensures I will not receive my email while I am traveling, because I have my system collect my email, post-process it according to rules I define, then forward some of the email to my phone.

When those popups block the process, I don't get mail at my phone - which is not acceptable.

I frankly think those popups are stupid. It is far better for the email client to just try again a few minutes later, if an attempt to collect the mail fails for any reason.

[jiml8]

Well, I just sat down at my computer, and was greeted with a requester informing me that kmail had been unable to connect to the server blah blah blah.

So, I guess turning off notifications as described above did not work.

These blocking requesters are a serious problem for me; I will move off of kmail if I cannot solve this problem.

Can anyone tell me which other email client will work the way I require?

[isadora]

My best is guess is Thunderbird.
Used KMail a lot in my beginning-years into Mandrake/Mandriva, but ever since 2005 moved towards TB.
And this also for unstable KMail-behaviour in those days.

[Gelsenbury]

Consideration of other mail clients aside, if the user disables the pop-up notification on a mail check error, the system should honour that and not ignore it. Perhaps it's a bug. Would you like to report it?