Kmail and address books and old mail

[Duncan]

kde posted on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:29:50 +0100 as excerpted:

> As Suse have just made kde the default desktop I have just upgraded to
> 11.4 kde 4.60 release 6. Main problem has been yast still insisting on
> using ipv6, disabling it in the browsers didn't turn out to be easy. The
> old ways don't work and ipv6 still causes dns problems for many users
> going on web searches. It's done so for years as well. Even KDE
> disregards the old don't use it flag.

FWIW, I'm on Gentoo, with USE=-ipv6 set, and have been using IPv4 without 
issues.  Additionally, I've yet to see anyone else mention IPv6 preferred 
over IPv4 issues in kde, so I strongly suspect it's a SuSE specific issue 
having little to do with kde.  As such, while there's an off chance 
someone may be able to help with it here, the SuSE lists/forums/channels/
whatever will likely be your better bet for that.

> Anyway. Now on my mail. Rather than typing out my address book how do I
> import my  old one and where and which file is it. My previous KDE is a
> late 3.something. From memory one release short of the last one before 4
> started to arrive.

On kde4, the addressbook has been handled by akonadi since 4.4.0.  You're 
in luck since the early versions of it had some bugs, but things should be 
a bit better now, once you get it straightened out, at least.

I don't claim to be an akonadi expert, but that's where I'd look first.  
Make sure akonadi is up and running properly.  Unfortunately the kcontrol 
module for this isn't shown by default, but from a konsole or krunner:

kcmshell4 akonadi

Note however that while this tool can be useful, it's not currently upto 
date, and for instance, lists only the mysql and postgresql drivers (on 
the server config tab, the right one), while the newer sqlite3 driver is 
now recommended (at least on Gentoo, and I can testify that it's better 
and more stable than the earlier mysql driver was).  As such, some of the 
test results, etc, can be confusing, as they don't all apply to the 
sqlite3 driver.

The important bit is that there are resources shown on the resources config 
tab (the left/default one), and that they show green/ready.

If the resources are all red or none are shown, you have a problem.  
/Then/ you can go to the other tab and see if you can get it working.  Try 
the test, and if necessary the stop and restart buttons.  On the test 
results dialog there's a troubleshooting URL, userbase.kde.org/Akonadi.  
Again, however, note that some of the suggestions there are slightly dated.

Another thing to check that IS in kcontrol (umm... systemsettings, except 
they're generally kde and user specific, so are NOT global system 
settings, why they changed from the old kde3 kcontrol name to something 
less accurate, I don't know, but I continue to use the more accurate 
kcontrol name as I'm talking about kde control settings, NOT system 
settings, despite the now rather confusing and impossibly generic name), 
found under common appearance and behavior, is the KDE Resources applet.  
You should have at least one contacts resource listed.  F

WIW, I had to fix that here at one point as it lost the info, I believe in 
an upgrade from an earlier kde4.  The file that points to here is 
$KDEHOME/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf .  ($KDEHOME is ~/.kde4 as shipped by kde, 
tho suse or you may have changed it... I have mine set to ~/kde , here, as 
I don't like that dir hidden.)

> Importing my old mail hasn't worked at all. I could do with a fix for
> this. The problem might be down to the directory structure I used. I
> have sub folders off inbox for one, several of them. There are several
> hundred mails in these structures split into many folders most of which
> are sub folders off inbox as that is a logical place to put them.

FWIW, I have a similarly "complex" mail directory structure.  kmail in 
kde4 hasn't had a problem with it that I recall, but I did upgrade from 
kde3 quite some time ago, so whether they broke the import since, I can't 
say for sure.

However, it may be a rather simpler matter of having a different default 
location.  FWIW, unlike the addressbook, while the kmail directory and 
message tree is planned to be akonadified at some point in the near 
future, it hasn't been yet, and the kde3 and kde4 structures are identical 
or very nearly so.  As such, you really shouldn't have to "import" from 
the kde3 location, so much as simply point kmail at the correct location 
so it can read the old files.  I /do/ remember that I deliberately moved 
the directory within my home dir and had to tell kmail where to find it 
after I did so.

I'd suggest backing up your existing mail store before you try this.  Also 
backup the file you'll be editing, just in case. Of course, it's a good 
idea to have a backup of your entire home dir when you're doing upgrades 
and the like anyway, so one would hope you already have that, but...

Then, with kmail NOT running:

Open $KDEHOME/share/config/kmailrc in a text editor.  ($KDEHOME is likely 
~/.kde4 if neither you nor suse set it to something else.)

Search for [General] on a line by itself as a section name.

Within that section, look for the folders= key.  The value should be a 
path (or possibly more than one, tho I've only one listed) that kmail 
stores its mail in.  Point that at the new location, or simply leave it as 
is but use the setting you found to move the old files to the new 
location.  (Sorry, I've no idea where the old default location might be.)

That should take care of the data itself, but you might well find that 
kmail doesn't structure it properly.  Here, it looks like /that/ data, 
along with a bunch of other data, is found in the $KDEHOME/share/apps/
kmail/ subdir.  But I think that location is the same as kde3, except of 
course that $KDEHOME itself now defaults to ~/.kde4, where it was 
presumably ~/.kde3 or the like, previously.  So I think all you'll need to 
do with that is make sure it's in the right place as I think it has 
remained the same format as before.  But of course, as I said above, make 
sure you have a backup before screwing with things.

Elsewise, you might find yourself having to rebuild your tree manually. I 
had to do that once in the kde3 era.  Each directory has all its mail in 
it as it should, but kde forgot the tree structure of the directories, 
which I had to manually recreate from the flat directory structure that 
kmail gave me when it lost the tree info.  I think that's where kmail 
stores read/important/etc status as well, so if you screwup and don't have 
your backups in order, you may well have that to restore manually, as well.

> I've also just noticed that spell check is coming and going

No clue on that.  That /may/ be a suse-specific issue as well, but perhaps 
not, 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

___________________________________________________
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.