[kde-linux] Akonadi_maildir_resource

[David Baron]

On Sunday 25 July 2010 13:00:15 kde-linux-request at kde.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Akonadi_maildir_resource (David Baron)
>    2. Re: Akonadi_maildir_resource (David Baron)
>    3. Re: Akonadi_maildir_resource (Duncan)
>    4. Re: Akonadi_maildir_resource (Duncan)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:16:48 +0300
> From: David Baron <d_baron at 012.net.il>
> Subject: [kde-linux] Akonadi_maildir_resource
> To: kde-linux at kde.org
> Message-ID: <201007250916.49489.d_baron at 012.net.il>
> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> My KDE4 is excruciatingly slow to start up. The culprit is Akonadi.
> Specifically akonadi_maildir_resource. A zillion of these start up and
> until most of them die out, nothing can move. I have not been able to
> simply ask for one or a desired small number of these (I have one
> vcs/maildir folder--how many "resources" does the require for kmail to run
> properly?).
> 
> How can one fix this or get it under some control?
> 
> Alternative mail program and scrap akonadi (or at least all its processes
> touching email)?
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:01:42 +0300
> From: David Baron <d_baron at 012.net.il>
> Subject: Re: [kde-linux] Akonadi_maildir_resource
> To: kde-linux at kde.org
> Message-ID: <201007251201.44114.d_baron at 012.net.il>
> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> On Sunday 25 July 2010 09:16:48 David Baron wrote:
> > My KDE4 is excruciatingly slow to start up. The culprit is Akonadi.
> > Specifically akonadi_maildir_resource. A zillion of these start up and
> > until most of them die out, nothing can move. I have not been able to
> > simply ask for one or a desired small number of these (I have one
> > vcs/maildir folder--how many "resources" does the require for kmail to
> > run properly?).
> > 
> > How can one fix this or get it under some control?
> > 
> > Alternative mail program and scrap akonadi (or at least all its processes
> > touching email)?
> 
> Actually, these resources are touching mail folders, not address-books and
> I have a good number of folders. So maybe the startup of so many of them
> is "correct." So the real questions:
> 
> 1. Why must this bog down the system? Nice/ionice?
> 2. Do I need ALL of them at once? Set max children/processes option?
> 3. I do not mind waiting for kmail to start if it needs ALL the folders
> synced in order to start. However, nothing else, i.e. plasma-desktop,
> should be waiting for any of this akonadi stuff. I am not running Nepomuk
> because of such problems. ALL startup process must be asynchronous.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:17:34 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [kde-linux] Akonadi_maildir_resource
> To: kde-linux at kde.org
> Message-ID: <pan.2010.07.25.09.17.34 at cox.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> David Baron posted on Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:16:48 +0300 as excerpted:
> > My KDE4 is excruciatingly slow to start up. The culprit is Akonadi.
> > Specifically akonadi_maildir_resource. A zillion of these start up and
> > until most of them die out, nothing can move. I have not been able to
> > simply ask for one or a desired small number of these (I have one
> > vcs/maildir folder--how many "resources" does the require for kmail to
> > run properly?).
> > 
> > How can one fix this or get it under some control?
> > 
> > Alternative mail program and scrap akonadi (or at least all its
> > processes touching email)?
> 
> You don't mention which version of kde4, which makes a big difference.
> 
> The deal with akonadi is this.  Until 4.4, very little in kde as released
> actually used akonadi at all.  With 4.3, kaddressbook began using it, and
> I think kopete did do (I don't use it or even have it installed, so all I
> know is what I've read, with it).  Also, krunner uses it I think, if
> autocomplete contacts are enabled (it uses nepomuk too, if its desktop
> search autocomplete is enabled).  But kmail itself doesn't use akonadi
> yet.  So with current kde 4.4.x, only "extra" stuff uses it, and before
> that, little actually depended on it at all.  Thus, unless you're using
> trunk or 4.5 branch, you should be able to disable akonadi if you have to,
> without breaking anything too important, tho with 4.4 I believe you'll
> lose kaddressbook (and part of kopete but I don't use it so don't have any
> idea if it's everything or not) if you do.
> 
> 4.5 is a different story.  Actually, 4.5.0 should be pretty much like
> 4.4.0, as they didn't think it was quite ready for the coming in August
> 4.5.0.  But kmail is scheduled to transition to akonadi with 4.5.1, so
> from then on, kmail with be broken if akonadi is.
> 
> However, they really are working on it and have fixed a quite a few issues
> with it, so by the time 4.5.1 comes around, one can hope it will actually
> work reasonably dependably, without hogging resources, etc.  I guess we'll
> see.
> 
> Meanwhile, you can probably tune akonadi somewhat, but I'm not the person
> to ask about that.  (I run a 2.8 GHz dual dual-core Opteron 290 system,
> Gentoo/~amd64, 6 gigs RAM, four SATA drives in md/kernel RAID-1... it's
> not like such things affect me enough to worry about unless they're
> *REALLY* bad, and they're not /that/ bad, at least here, so it's nothing
> I'e had to deal with.)  But Kevin Krammer should answer when he sees this
> too, and he's one of the folks working on the kmail akonadi transfer, so
> if anyone can help you get things under control, it should be him.
> 
> > Actually, these resources are touching mail folders, not address-books
> > and I have a good number of folders. So maybe the startup of so many of
> > them is "correct." So the real questions:
> > 
> > 1. Why must this bog down the system? Nice/ionice? 2. Do I need ALL of
> > them at once? Set max children/processes option? 3. I do not mind
> > waiting for kmail to start if it needs ALL the folders synced in order
> > to start. However, nothing else, i.e. plasma-desktop, should be waiting
> > for any of this akonadi stuff. I am not running Nepomuk because of such
> > problems. ALL startup process must be asynchronous.
> 
> The good news here is that such complaints were one of the big things they
> were working on for akonadi with 4.5 and 4.5.1 (the latter being when kmail
> starts using it, itself).  From what I've read, 4.5 is much better at
> limiting both nepomuk and akonadi to "reasonable" I/O usage, so they're
> not hogging the entire I/O bandwidth, preventing anything else from
> getting anywhere.
> 
> But I'll let Kevin fill in the details, as he's one of the guys actually
> working on the akonadi and kmail thing.

KMail does, if not use it, depend on it in 4.4.*. If for some reason, usually 
timing out, the akonadi crashes, kmail will abort. Will work 100% when 
restarted, however. I manually killed the maildir resources. Kmail did work 
for stuff already in its folders but did not get the imap messages until I 
restarted it.

Kaddressbook does indeed use akonadi. Runs almost unusably slowly and presents 
multiple copies of the exact same data.

Good to hear that things may (hope...) get better in 4.5!