Can't click on email links anymore

[Duncan]

Nikos Chantziaras posted on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 14:59:27 +0300 as excerpted:

> I lost the ability to click on "mailto:" links.  Either in Konqueror or
> in other applications (the "About" box in Amarok, for example). Whenever
> I click a link, I get an error box titled "Error - KIOExec" which says:
> "Could not start process Can not find io-slave for protocol 'mailto'.."
> 
> "Default Applications - Email Client" in System Settings is set-up
> correctly.
> 
> I'm on KDE 4.5.2, Gentoo AMD64.

How familiar that last bit looks. =:^)

As a matter of fact, I have what appears to be the same problem, tho I 
didn't realize it until reading your post and trying it.  The error is a 
bit different, tho.  Still titled Error - KIOExec (as yours), and it 
starts out the same, "Could not start process."  But it differs from 
there: "Unable to create io-slave: klauncher said: Error loading 
'kmailservice %u'."

Obviously, I have my mail setup to use kmail, which probably explains the 
"kmailservice" bit.  I'm guessing yours is/was setup for something else, 
so the error is a bit different.

FWIW, I get two hits for: 
equery b -f '.*kmailservice.*':

kde-base/kdelibs-4.5.2 (/usr/share/kde4/services/kmailservice.protocol)
kde-base/kdelibs-4.5.2 (/usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kmailservice)

The first one is the config, the second a binary -- located in libexec, a 
directory designated for executables that are NOT intended to be directly 
run by the user and thus shouldn't be on the path.  Here's the contents of 
the *.protocol file:

[Protocol]
exec=kmailservice %u
protocol=mailto
input=none
output=none
helper=true
listing=
reading=false
writing=false
makedir=false
deleting=false
X-DocPath=kioslave/mailto/index.html
Icon=mail-message-new
Class=:internet
URIMode=mailto

However, it's not a simple path issue, as adding the full path to the exec 
line and executing kbuildsycoca4 to update the config, does indeed update 
the config (the error changes to include the path), but I still get the 
error.

But I think that %u is supposed to be substituted out for the address/URL 
in question, by the time the error pops up, and it isn't.  So it would 
seem to me that the URL substitution isn't working.  If that is indeed the 
case, it would explain your problem when using a different configuration 
as well, since presumably it would fail the substitution in your case as 
well.  (Also presumably, you'd have a user config file in the user's 
$KDEHOME, parallel to the system one in /usr/share, since presumably 
you're not using that system default.  If you wish to try experimenting, 
you'd thus experiment with your user config version, not the system config 
version.)

FWIW, I did try manually calling kmailservice, at the command line, 
filling in a proper address, and it did popup kmail's compose window with 
that address in the to:, so kmailservice itself is working.  It's just the 
kioslave that's apparently failing to make the proper URL substitution.

Oh, just figured out something that works here!  Simply removing the %u in 
that exec line above, so it's just kmailservice, works!  I directly edited 
the system config file, then ran (in my existing kde session) 
kbuildsycoca4 to notify the running konquerors, etc, and tested, and it 
worked!

But changing the setting in kcontrol, default apps, didn't work.  It might 
have changed it for the user, but if so, it was still trying to go thru 
kmailservice as set by the system, so it didn't work.

So... try editing /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kmailservice to remove the %u on 
the exec line, and see if that fixes it for you, too.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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