Kmail passwords

Sun Jan 22 23:49:36 GMT 2012

Peter G Nikolic posted on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:45:27 +0000 as excerpted:

> I have a problem that is annoyin to say the least
> 
> I older versions of Kmail it would very happily store the mail passwords
> in the config file  now it does not althou i tell it to store them
> system versions as in sig block   but just in case
> 
> 
> KDE Development Platform: 4.7.4 (4.7.4)  64 bit
> 
> every time i close down the system and restart it i have to re enter ALL
> the passwords for Kmail (thats 11 passwords)  . I do not like the
> Kwallet thing and do not wish to use it at all    how do i convince
> Kmail to behave

There's a somewhat obscure detail you left out when you mentioned the kde 
version, probably either because you didn't know about it, or you forgot 
that it applied.

kdepim (which kmail is a part of) was stuck at the 4.4.x level for all of 
kde 4.5 and some of 4.6, as the devs worked on kmail2, which switched 
kmail to the akonadi backend.  Even in kde 4.7 and possibly 4.8, some 
distros/individuals don't believe the new akonadi-based kmail/kdepim 
versions corresponding to the kde version are stable enough, so continue 
to ship/use the old 4.4.x versions, altho they're looking a bit dated by 
now -- at least they're quite stable.

So at least for now, for anything dealing with kmail or kdepim, in 
addition to the kde version, the kdepim version is also quite useful, or 
lacking that, the kmail version, which tho harder to track, will at least 
reveal whether you're using 1.x and thus kdepim 4.4.x or 2.x and thus 
presumably the same kdepim version as the rest of your kde.

That said, due to the nature of the problem I'll presume you're using the 
new akonadified kdepim/kmail, not the old 4.4.x.

AFAIK the new akonadified kmail/akonadi no longer has a plain-text mail 
account password storage mechanism at all.  You either use the kwallet 
mechanism, or enter all account passwords at every akonadi restart.  (In 
the new setup, kmail is just a UI wrapper around akonadi, and it's 
actually various akonadi resources that track email local storage and 
each email account, separately.  Thus, shut down akonadi and you have to 
reenter passwords (kwallet or individual accounts) when you restart it, 
even if kde and kmail remained running the whole time.)

FWIW, I had my doubts back with kdepim 4.4 when kaddressbook switched to 
akonadi, but decided I'd wait to see what the akonadified kmail was 
like.  After trying the akonadified kmail in kdepim 4.6.0 and 4.6.1 
(still not synced with the rest of kde but they came out during kde 4.6 
at least, kdepim 4.6.0 I believe with kde 4.6.2), I'd had enough, and 
decided I had to get off it, so switched to the gtk-based claws-mail from 
kmail about the time of kde's 4.7.0 release, and got rid of all of kdepim 
and akonadi entirely (I was also using akregator and switched to claws-
mail using its feed-reader plugin for that as well, I run two separate 
claws-mail instances now, one for feeds one for mail) by 4.7.1.  It's 
rather ironic that almost exactly a decade ago now when I switched to 
Linux from MSWormOS, I picked kmail over the then sylpheed-claws, but now 
I'm using the successor claws-mail having switched from kmail. =:^0

Obviously the switch took a bit of getting used to, and the conversion 
process was somewhat difficult as I had nearly a decade's worth of mail 
in kmail, plus another several years' worth that I had imported to kmail 
from MSOE,  However, seeing where kde's taking kmail, I'm /really/ not 
interested in going there, and the only thing I wish now is that I had 
migrated earlier, as I've been quite happy with claws-mail indeed! =:^)  
The new akonadified stuff may be great for some folks and I understand 
why they're doing it since it allows the kdepim folks to combine much of 
the code that had been duplicated between the various kdepim components 
into a single akonadi and database backend, but that's just not where I'm 
going, so I wish them well, but we're obviously going in different 
directions and thus I've switched to claws-mail, which which I'm quite 
happy, instead.  Of course there's other alternative mail apps as well; 
I've read of others switching to evolution, for instance, but that's 
gnome-based and I don't have nor want gnome installed, and besides, it's 
a huge monolithic beast for those who just want a mail client, too, so 
that wasn't for me.  But claws-mail was! =:^)

Meanwhile, of course, with 4.8 kde is introducing the new ksecrets 
framework, designed to be api compatible with gnome-keyring (tho the 
backends are different), and over the next several kde versions, it's 
likely various apps will switch to ksecrets from kwallet, leaving kwallet 
deprecated, altho I'm guessing it'll remain available thru the kde4 
series.  But whether it'll be in kde 5 or whether ksecrets will take over 
for kde5 and they'll drop kwallet, remains to be seen.

-- 
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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