Kmail on mga6 usability issues

[morgano]

I guess all are KDE bugs so i will not issue mageia bugs, but to help others here, and maybe someone have input for me.

After online upgrade (whith all apps incl kmail closed) mga5 -> mga6 using urpmi, Kmail found all mails (i kept my mga5 home) and basically "just works", however:

1) Mail list was just grey lines. Pretty shocking until i realised i had to drag out the zero width topic column from far left, then enable other columns to show, and drag them out from far right...

2) Menu "Show" -> "Headings >" simply do not fold out (is this just on my system?)

3) It looks generally terrible in my taste: the new icons are much less clear, and it wastes screen everywhera with large row heights while using small fonts (this goes for folder list, mail list, and menues - like other applications so i think it may be a setting in kde/plasma... but where?

4) When showing html content in mails, the characters are pixly.

[doktor5000]

Can't comment much on kmail, but for Mageia vs. KDE bugs please read viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10947

[Bequimao]

Hello,

I got the message "PIM Maintanance finished" several times. It is a fresh install from Mageia 6 dev 1. I imported the settings via "PIM Setting Exporter" from an openSUSE Leap instance. The import itself was not complete, but helpful. I had to reconfigure 2 IMAP accounts manually. The issue is only the dispensable message.

Best regards,
Bequimão

[morgano]

Where do you see "PIM Maintenance finished" - is it a popup?
EDIT: yes i see shortly after logging in, message in KDE system tray information thingy whatever it is named in english, problem is that it is translated, and text chopped off (shouldnt it wrap or something intelligent?) so it reads "Maintenance of personal", which reminds me i should go to bed.

Three kmail related problems: /EDIT

1) at each login the converter module for KDE wallet wants it opened, i enter the key but it asks next login again.
(Not a Kmail problem, but KDE/plasma/something... EDIT Migration from mga5: kwallet conversion at every login?! /EDIT

2) more often than in mga5 it silenty fail to synchronise one or more accounts using IMAP. I also have seen popups that akonadi_imap03 or similar have crashed.
I chosed Kmail some years ago as it then had least problems with IMAP (to my internet provider anyway), but if this continues i must change.

3) when i login there are several akonadi_imap_resource processes started (probably one for each account i use imap on) even when i have not started Kmail. I have not figured out how to avoid them starting, ans if i shut them down they respawn. I must be able to login to system also whenever i do not want to synchronise! (i.e for backup or migration purpose)

[Bequimao]

Hi morgano,

I can confirm that I cannot select any header type, and I don't see any header. Though I never had problems with the exposure and performance.
I lost my kmail filters twice, which is probably an upstream issue.

The password of KWallet is asked quite often after login. I don't know if it follows any rules. I suppose it has to do with the indexing of the IMAP folders, which is needed to expose the folders later. I get the message "PIM maintenance finished" in the area of notifications. I see in journalctl that it tried to migrate "old" wallets each time, though there never have been such wallets.
I guessed in https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18425 that the bug was related to the missing package kdepim-addons. It was resolved. The issue disappeared, but I cannot trace the solution.

Best regards,
Bequimão

[morgano]

I am getting fed up with loosing IMAP sync more than once a day.
Mostly it just silently stop working, despite i see imap resources running, and i have no mails for one or more accounts until i log out/in (but I reboot just in case...)
On mageia 5 it happened "only" every other week and i was hoping it would get better as Kmail matured more, not worse...
Now i also had akonadi_imap_resource crashing, message pop up about that, and i click to debug
gdb then said i need to

Code: Select all

debuginfo-install akonadi-kde-16.04.1-1.mga6.x86_64

which i did after enableing media "Core Release Debug", and it installed the kdepim-runtime-debuginfo package.

Now i realise i should optimally have all seven akonadi_imap_resource launched by gdb instances, problem is this is not my cup of tea and they are launched automatically before kmail durin login.
Feel pain and struggle ahead and i have no time for that, and it will probably not be much better soon anyway...

All the time I fear loosing some mail in transaction. I think it already happened.

I could skip upsyncing and change to POP with option "keep last xx days", but I am loosing faith in Kmail for more reasons than IMAP as described earlier in thread.

Any suggestion for a stable email client that can do offline IMAP?
( wish to have last months mail available at my ISP webmail for easy access while travelling/at external work sites, and sync down and up with local email program, which i prefer for overwiew, search, archiving, and snappiness. )
We also want to stay away from third party, especially foreign companies, as i sign NDA and IMO that do not work well with such.

[Bequimao]

Hi morgano,

Seven Akonadi IMAP resources? I guess that you don't have 7 IMAP accounts. I remember that I renamed the valid IMAP resources to the names of my providers and deleted some redundant resources under KMail settings -> Accounts -> receiving. So your problems might originate from concurrent accesses to the accounts. I think it is impossible to delete mails incidentally by program errors.

I regret that akonaditray is no longer available under Plasma 5. So I installed now akonadiconsole. It is quite odd, that the resource "Personal Calendar" is marked as "not configured yet", but it is running and I had imported some data. I toggled the "Migration Agent" to offline, so that the message doesn't occur any longer. Unfortunately real data are needed for testing.

Best regards,
Bequimão

P.S. I will write a bug report on the header problem.
Edit: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18650

[morgano]

Yes i have seven different accounts for different uses, like business, personal, free software, temporary communications, registrations...

[Bequimao]

I see from your bugreport 18576 that you have installed two versions of kwallet. There can't be any dependency left for the old one. Please purge it. Maybe there is also some old stuff hanging around from kdepim or kmail. The only issue left here are the missing headers.

I can't believe that it works so poorly. I am using KMail5 with openSUSE 42.1 as working environment.

Best regards,
Bequimão

[morgano]

Thanks for looking
what *kwallet* packages do you have installed?

I have

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# rpm -qa | grep kwallet
kwallet-daemon-16.04.1-1.mga6
kwalletmanager-16.04.1-1.mga6
lib64keyring-kwallet15-16.04.1-1.mga6
kwalletmanager-handbook-16.04.1-1.mga6
kwallet-5.22.0-1.mga6
kwallet-pam-5.6.4-1.mga6
lib64kwalletbackend4-16.04.1-1.mga6

It is kwallet that contain kwalletd5. Removing it will pull

Code: Select all

- kde-rootactions-servicemenu-2.8.7-1.mga6.noarch
- kwalletmanager-16.04.1-1.mga6.x86_64
- kwalletmanager-handbook-16.04.1-1.mga6.noarch
- plasma-desktop-5.6.4-1.mga6.x86_64
- plasma-workspace-5.6.4-1.mga6.x86_64
- plasma-workspace-wayland-5.6.4-1.mga6.x86_64
- kmail-16.04.1-2.mga6.x86_64
- kmail-handbook-16.04.1-2.mga6.noarch
- task-plasma5-5.6.3-1.mga6.noarch
- task-plasma5-minimal-5.6.3-1.mga6.noarch

It is kwallet-daemon that contain kwalletd. Removing it will pull

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- kmail-16.04.1-2.mga6.x86_64
- kmail-handbook-16.04.1-2.mga6.noarch

is there some bogus dependency?


EDIT: here is my *kdepim* packages:

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# rpm -qa | grep kdepim
kdepimlibs-core-16.04.1-2.mga6
kdepimlibs-handbooks-16.04.1-2.mga6
lib64kf5libkdepim5-16.04.1-1.mga6
libkdepim-16.04.1-1.mga6
kdepim-apps-libs-16.04.1-1.mga6
kdepim-runtime-debuginfo-16.04.1-2.mga6
kdepim-accountwizard-16.04.1-2.mga6
kdepim-16.04.1-2.mga6
lib64kdepimdbusinterfaces4-4.14.5-1.mga5
lib64kdepim4-4.14.5-1.mga5
kdepimlibs4-handbooks-4.14.10-8.mga6
kdepimlibs4-core-4.14.10-8.mga6
kdepim-core-16.04.1-2.mga6
lib64kf5kdepimdbusinterfaces5-16.04.1-1.mga6


/EDIT

[Bequimao]

Hi morgano,

my analysis proved incorrect as quite often. The difference is that you have installed kwallet-pam. I tried to install kwallet-pam and lib64keyring-kwallet15, but it did not work. It should work as a SSO tool (Single Sign On), i. e. you use the same password at login and in kwallet and enter your password only once. But I don't know if and how to adjust /etc/pam.d/sddm.

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[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa | grep kwallet
kwallet-5.22.0-1.mga6
lib64kwalletbackend4-16.04.1-1.mga6
kwalletmanager-16.04.1-1.mga6
kwallet-daemon-16.04.1-1.mga6
[root@localhost ~]#

Did you try kontact and kmail with a fresh user? Perhaps we still have not reached the stability to test any migration. I am glad that I don't have any Mageia 5 installation

Best regards,
Bequimão

[morgano]

I have not tried with fresh user, that would be a good idea to try.
Also to delete current wallet and enter a new one for curren user would be a good test.
Will do that later I just hope - for mageia migration performance - that it will be able to fix itself.

Yes i want to open kwallet once, and automatically supply credentials to programs. I think that is the default? Or at least was on mga5. That works, except i have to "open" it three times each login.
BTW there was some updates yesterday that scared me a bit as it removed kio4-imap and did not provide a kio5-imap, but i let it, and kmail still works the same after following changes, reboot and another logout/login:
Removed

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kdepimlibs4-core-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av konflikter med kdepimlibs-core-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64)
kdepimlibs4-handbooks-4.14.10-8.mga6.noarch
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core >= 2:4.14.10-8.mga6)
kio4-imap-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-ldap-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-mbox-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-nntp-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-pop3-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-sieve-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kio4-smtp-4.14.10-8.mga6.x86_64
 (på grund av otillräckliga kdepimlibs4-core == 2:4.14.10)
kopete-16.04.1-2.mga6.x86_64
 (för att kdepimlibs4-core saknas)
kopete-handbook-16.04.1-2.mga6.noarch
 (på grund av otillräckliga kopete >= 4:16.04.1-2.mga6) 

Installed:

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- kdepimlibs-core-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kdepimlibs-handbooks-16.04.1-3.mga6.noarch
- kio5-ldap-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kio5-mbox-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kio5-nntp-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kio5-pop3-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kio5-sieve-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- kio5-smtp-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- lib64kf5akonadicontact5-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- lib64kf5akonadimime5-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- lib64kf5akonadinotes5-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64
- lib64kf5akonadisocialutils5-16.04.1-3.mga6.x86_64

[morgano]

I am still on Kmail, wallet still need three times unlocking, and still IMAP stops syncing sometimes
I just read @ dev list:

KF5 => 5.23.0 => it will fix some blocker bugs on kwallet we are experiencing
Plasma => 5.6.5 => Bug fixes
KDE Applications => 16.04.2 => Bug fixes

, so hopefully it will work better soon.

[Bequimao]

I have now kwallet-pam installed but not configured yet. The program KMail works as before, no syncing errors with my IMAP accounts.
I tested kwallet-pam in KaOS Linux with Plasma 5.6. It works exactly when configured as described in the Arch wiki, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE_Wallet.
After the coming updates I will start another test.

[morgano]

Back from vacation and updated the system:
Now KF5=5.23.0, other updates i mentioned in my last post above is not here yet.
IMAP still loose sync silently to the user, Show->Headings is still broken, but the kwallet issue is better:

Now kwalletd5 (from package kwallet) only asks once when kmail starts (for akonadi_imap processes), and when owncloud starts it use kwalletd (from package kwallet-daemon) so there is another unlock dialogue.

Of course it would be nice to have only one version kwallet installed, and kmail/akonadi and owncloud used the same.
Test to uninstalling package kwallet (the new generation) would pull plasma-desktop, plasma-workspace, task-plasma5* etc, I understand that.
If I instead uninstall the old kwallet-daemon it would pull kmail. This last really seem like a bogus dependency as kmail use the new kwalletd5 daemon of package kwallet.

[Bequimao]

I implemented the following idea in openSUSE 42.1: I installed to an encrypted home, activated autologin and left the two passwords of kwallet blank, so I have to enter only one password for encryption. Works great, but I have to backup also to an encrypted partition.
I really like to have a working kwallet-pam, and possibly integration of other kwallet modules. This is the way gnome works for many, many years.

Btw. a new issue: I get several segfaults of Akonadi modules when I log out from my session (not on shutdown or restart).

Bequimão

[lissacoffey]

I imported the settings via "PIM Setting Exporter" from an openSUSE Leap instance. The import itself was not complete, but helpful. while On mageia 5 it happened "only" every other week and i was hoping it would get better as Kmail matured more, not worse...

[Bequimao]

Hi lissacoffey,

Nice to meet you here! Do you use IMAP accounts?

it seems like the import requires paths on the server side of an IMAP account before any authentication took place. In my case I upgraded KMail in openSUSE before to version 15.x, so both are qt5 versioned. This might be an upstream issue, but before reporting any migration bug of sorts, we should have a complete KMail and Kontact suite working. I fear that it not the case.

What happened in Mag 5 "only" every other week? You are certainly aware that cauldron is a developing version, so ranting is not appropriate.

Best regards,
Bequimão

[ozky]

Exactly there is huge banner don't use it in production machine but nobody read it, then they cry like linux fanboy trolling and flamewar that something broked whole system.

Be careful! This is a beta, unstable release.It is only intended for developer use. DO NOT USE THIS IN PRODUCTION OR FOR OFFICIAL REVIEW.

[morgano]

Who is crying?
Actually Mageia 6 is in stabilisation now, and short on time to iron out quirks.
Unfortunately i do not have time to dig into it or be more specific on kmail issues, post bugs with useful logs etc so just do some half lame reporting here.
Rest of mga6 is working very fine here on three production systems, and i do use it for production partly because we need to use some apps in later versions than mga5 have, partly to feed back on real usage (on other parts than kmail and wallet too)

[ozky]

Yes you are right it's in stabilatzion but i didn't mean you acctually i mean here is lot more users do it you have not.

[Bequimao]

I am still on Kmail, wallet still need three times unlocking, and still IMAP stops syncing sometimes
I just read @ dev list:

KF5 => 5.23.0 => it will fix some blocker bugs on kwallet we are experiencing
Plasma => 5.6.5 => Bug fixes
KDE Applications => 16.04.2 => Bug fixes

, so hopefully it will work better soon.

The transitions went further now:
KF5 is at 5.24.0 now,
Plasma at 5.7.1
KDE Applications at 16.04.3

I always thought that Plasma 5 was not so bad as claimed in the mailing lists, but unfortunately I don't see any improvement. All the issues which I spotted are still valid. It looks like I have to start filing bug reports

Bequimão

[morgano]

Well I have now personally had enough of accumulated annoyance of Kmail issues over then years. Rant:

Spoiler:

That is it deeply integrated in KDE parts including half baked search that just complicate the set up and repair is making it worse.
To top it up, the Plasma login where i had my Kmail broke after plasma updates a couple weeks ago.
(since then i have been using webmail)

In one of the attempts to make it working i deleted and recreated the user, but
Bug 18930 - New users can not log in; "crypt_ra: Numerical result out of range" in log
wrecked that attempt and ate repair work time.

Thinking about how to retrieve the akonadi stored mail to working login made me freak out.

Enough is enough.

I can never again accept a mail client to be dependant on the desktop environment.
Mail is one of the most important tasks for most users, and a mail application must be very rigid, secure, reliable, and portable between desktop systems, computers etc, and that porting must not be dependent on that the DE or the DE user login is operable.

Am starting over with another mail program that is more self contained, and i chose Thunderbird.
Handling and searching mail content locally is much faster so i prefer to have all downloaded in the mail client (also)
I do have mail stored at my ISP and can retrieve using IMAP, so it is theoretically not very hard.
(i real life it learnt it can to mes up anyhow, IMAP is only some 40 years old...maybe different server/client dialect and implementation ideas... ah well...)

Possibly I will abandon KDEPlasma as well, until it works as well as KDE3 and KDE4 was working when they matured.

[ozky]

You could try lxqt it's so stable compared to plasma 5 i did try it myself and reverted back to lxqt.
Plasma 5 was just too unstable it crashes many times in 1 minute,i can say kmail it sucks it's very buggy thunderbird is still best.

[Bequimao]

Hi,

I have now a truly working Kontact and Kmail. The header issue mentioned before is solved: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18650

I managed to invoke Kleopatra and gpg-agent. To start gpg-agent at login I added this line to my ~/.bash_profile:

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eval $(gpg-agent --daemon --use-standard-socket --pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-qt)

I spent much time on testing. This is clearly something that should work out of the box.

Greetings,
Bequimão