Once again kmail's folder creation fails

[gene heskett]

On Friday, August 19, 2011 04:00:01 AM Duncan did opine:

> gene heskett posted on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:26:38 -0400 as excerpted:
> > KDE-4.6.5, 32 bit.
> > 
> > For some reason, the new folder thing insists on creating a
> > sub-folder, and will not allow it to be moved to the same directory
> > level as the inbox/outbox and about 40 other folders all visible in
> > this top level list.
> > 
> > Am I not chewing the right stuff or ??
> 
> You mention the kde version (good), but do note that kmail is part of
> kdepim, which unfortunately makes things rather more complicated than
> that.

Kmail help says 1.13.7

> The problem is that kdepim was stuck at the 4.4.x level for some
> time as they worked out problems in the new "akonadified" kmail2.  There
> was a kdepim 4.6.0 and 4.6.1 release, but they came out much later than
> the rest of kde 4.6 (kdepim 4.6.0 came out about the time of kde 4.6.3,
> IIRC, and kdepim 4.6.1 was after that, between kde 4.6.4 and kde 4.6.5,
> I /think/), and apparently were even then for early-adopters only.
> 
> So it's quite likely that you have only kdepim 4.4.x, with x=10 or
> higher.
> 
> It makes quite a difference, as the kdepim 4.6 versions were both
> relatively unstable for kmail, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this
> sort of bug at all, with them.

This is a pclos install, about 12 hours overdue to update, so one could 
call it up to date.  According to the /var/cache/apt/archives contents, 
kdepim is 4.4.11-1. Dated April 23 2011

kdepimlibs4-4.6.5 dated July 1 2011

> Meanwhile, kdepim got back in sync with the rest of kde for 4.7.0, so
> with the 4.7 series, you can again refer simply to the kde version when
> talking about kmail (except that some distros /may/ decide to stick with
> the older kdepim 4.4 thru 4.7, too, but that'd be distro-specific if
> they did).

pclos has been very aggressive, passing your updates on to the users 
quickly, often the next day, after a new release.
 
> Meanwhile(2), we've had a number of previous thread-discussions, but I'm
> not sure if you've followed my postings since.  If you have, you already
> know that after testing it with the kdepim 4.6 series, I decided the new
> akonadified kmail was not for me, and after nearly a decade on kmail
> (since kde2 era, 2002, with imports from MSOE that go back another half-
> decade or so), I've now switched to claws-mail.
> 
> Here's the warning.  I suspect you, as me, aren't going to be
> particularly happy with the new akonadified kmail.  However, if you have
> a large existing local mail store (not IMAP, local mbox or maildir) as I
> did, migrating to claws-mail won't be particularly easy.  OTOH, unless
> they make migration from kmail-1 easier, that migration won't be
> particularly easy either.

Oh oh.  My email corpus is about 10Gb, reaching back 9+ years for 3 of the 
lists I am on.
 
> OTOH, if you're on IMAP or don't have a huge local mail collection that
> you are particularly worried about carrying forward, things should be a
> LOT easier for you either way you go, staying with the new akonadified
> kmail2, or switching to claws-mail or something else.
> 
> But either way, assuming you are still using the older kdepim 4.4 series
> kmail1, expect that you may have some issues when you upgrade to kde 4.7
> and thus the akonadified kmail2.  If you're thinking about switching to
> something else, doing it now, before that upgrade, will save you the
> hassle of both that upgrade, deciding you don't like it, and then
> switching to something else, and either way, upgrading kmail or
> switching, you can expect some difficulties in the process.  How bad
> those are depends on a lot of factors, including whether you want to be
> sure and take all your existing mail with you, whether you're on IMAP or
> POP3+local-folders, how many mail addresses you have, whether and to
> what extent you take advantage of kmail's filtering system, etc.

I use the hell out of kmails filtering system, but because kmail is single 
threaded, all mail suckage is handled by fetchmail/procmail/spamassassin, 
and what passes that gauntlet, with mailfilter in front of fetchmail, is 
dropped into the /var/spool/mail/gene mailfile, which kmail can then 
process without the lengthy composer stalls caused by kmail pulling the 
mail from the ISP's servers.  That has been my solution to the composer 
stalls, and works exceedingly well since I figured out a way to notify 
kmail when new mail is available using inotifywait, so kmail is now 
synchonized to the mail appearing in that file.  It is now pulled, filtered 
and sorted a few milliseconds after procmail deposits it in the above 
mailfile.  Effectively solving the single, most maddening issue with kmail, 
something I have railed about, at length, probably enough that I have been 
in Ingo K's killfile for a couple years. His priorities apparently didn't 
match mine.  Now that I have solved the problem my way, its a shrug.  ;-)

Maybe kmail-2 will be multithreaded?  I suspect that may well open a 
configuration can of worms similar to my solution, which has been several 
years in the genesis.

> But
> you're forewarned now, and I'd DEFINITELY plan to spend some extra time
> on it when you do that upgrade, regardless of whether it's to the new
> kmail2, or a switch to something else.

I do maintain an extensive backup of that corpus using amanda here, playing 
the part of the canary in the coal mine, currently running an alpha version 
of amanda-4, so I have a small measure of recovery available when that time 
comes.

> OTOH, if you choose to stick with kmail and get lucky, it'll go all
> smooth for you and you'll wonder what I was making a big deal of!  In
> fact, if you're already running kdepim 4.6 (not just the rest of kde
> 4.6), you've apparently probably already done that upgrade, and since I
> didn't see any posts from you complaining about it (you can check the
> archive for mine), it apparently went far better for you than it did for
> me, and now you're just having a folder creation problem.  If so, count
> yourself lucky indeed, as you got off FAR easier than I did, for sure!

Thanks Duncan. Honest opinions/warnings are always appreciated.

I did look at claws once, quickly but not deeply, couldn't develop any 
enthusiasm for it, but it was years ago.  Things generally improve with 
age.  That saying about 'the older I get, the better I _was_' comes to 
mind.  ;-)  

And I just ran the updater, so my unused t-bird install is now up to 6.0.1, 
as is firefox here on pclos.

PCLos scratches normal user itches well, and is dead stable as long as you 
stay with their vision.  But doing something off the wall, like installing 
either of the FPGA builders free packages cannot be done as its libxml2.so 
is almost 2 years old & missing the gzdirect function.  Heekscad/heekscnc 
can't be built for similar reasons, but the Heekscad suite builds on a 
single core 1.4Ghz athlon box with ubuntu-10.04 LTS toot-sweet.  I haven't 
tried to install quartus 11 on that same box as its HD would be well filled 
by that package, its only a 46Gb drive in that box which also runs my 
milling machine.  That free FPGA suite to program the Altera DE-1, is over 
22Gb just to install.

Cheers, gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
What causes the mysterious death of everyone?
___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.