KDE 4.8.1 doing strange things with some applications

[Duncan]

Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:57:38 +0100 as excerpted:

> pete writes:
> 
>> I am having a few strange interactions here with KDE4.8.1  i use claws
>> mail for the simple reason Kmail has caused me too much hassle recently
>>  ,
> 
> Me too, for daily use. For encrypted mails or local folders I still use
> KMail. Or when Claws crashes after sending a mail like now.

Claws-mail all the way, here.  I dumped that akonadi abomination and 
along with it (Gentoo) USE=semantic-desktop entirely, like the scourge it 
turned out to be to my system!

>>  all was well untill the update to KDE 4.8.1 then every time
>> i send a mail it closes claws down if i open a compose window then
>> think dont bother and close the window the entire claws vanishes Claws
>> mail is version 3.8.0 on Arch Linux as in sig block below
> 
> Exactly the same happens here on Gentoo Linux since this morning. I am
> running 4.8.1 since two weeks ago, but there was an update to 4.8.1-r1
> three days ago, and I did not log out of KDE since today. But there was
> also an update to Xorg yesterday, from 1.11.4 to 1.12.0.

Absolutely no such issues, here (also on Gentoo, ~amd64/no-multilib FWIW, 
with the kde, x11 and mozilla overlays).  I too have the xorg-server 
1.12.0 update, kde 4.8.1, etc.  One big difference, however, would be 
that I've disabled semantic-desktop entirely, and don't have kdepim or 
akonadi or any of that stuff on the system.

> The error message when started from a terminal is:
> 
> The program 'claws-mail' received an X Window System error.
> This probably reflects a bug in the program.
> The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
>   (Details: serial 55930 error_code 3 request_code 151 minor_code 3)
>   (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
>    that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
>    To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line option to
>    change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful backtrace from
>    your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
> 
> And it also crashes when I run it in another window manager like IceWM
> or Enlightenment, with KDE running at that time or not. It even does so
> when I rename the .claws-mail directory so it starts with default
> configuration.
> 
> However, it does _not_ crash when I run it with a new user with empty
> $HOME directory. Unless... this user is running KDE. But it only crashes
> from within KDE, it still does not crash in Enlightenment then. So, this
> user cannot run Claws from KDE, while I cannot use it at all now.
> 
> I did not investigate this further, I probably could do some config
> bisecting, but I have no spare time at the moment. Did you also upgrade
> X to 12.0?

As I mentioned above, I have, but haven't seen that issue here.

But based on the behavior you mention, with it happening in other DEs 
besides kde with your regular user, but not with a new user... except in 
kde...

It sounds to me like it might be due to some bit of the gtk 
configuration, or some such.  Of course, claws-mail is a gtk-based app...

Note that with the xorg-server 1.12 update came inputproto 2.2, with 
multitouch support.  AFAIK some bits of gtk3 have multitouch support 
already, provided it's supported by X, and if you have that on your 
system (I don't, only gtk2), a rebuild of various bits of it against the 
new xorg bits may be in order.  I assume you did a revdep-rebuild, Wonko?

Also, it's worth noting that I do *NOT* use FEATURES=preserve-libs due to 
various issues I had with it early on.  IMO it's MUCH simpler to just let 
the old libs be pulled and let revdep-rebuild detect and fix the 
problems, than to monkey around trying to troubleshoot issues due to 
stale libs still being on the system, apps trying to load both the new 
and the old one together, etc.  YMMV but if you have it on, you might 
consider turning it off, and see if over time, your number of mysterious 
issues goes down.  Here, I could probably troubleshoot individual 
problems, but it really /is/ just simpler to disable the feature 
entirely, and let revdep-rebuild do its job without preserve-libs 
throwing a spanner in the works!

> P.S. when sending this mail, KMail asks for the SMTP server's password.
> Why doesn't it use the KDE wallet this time? These are those problems
> that made me switch to Claws. I'll restart Kontact and try again.

AFAIK it's akonadi that actually handles mail passwords, etc, now.

At least back in the 4.6 era just coming up on 4.7, when I exterminated 
akonadi from my system, one of my frustrations with the whole thing was 
that I have something like a half-dozen email accounts.  When I logged in 
or otherwise restarted akonadi, it would stall them all waiting for the 
kwallet password for the first one, but if I provided it, the others 
would remain stalled, until I manually stopped their fetchs and restarted 
them.  And I had to do that within the kwallet password timeout, or 
they'd have the same problem once again.

What was worse, if I wasn't interested in mail ATM and simply canceled 
out, then at the next timed check, they'd ALL come up individually, each 
needing it's individual password, with NO second chance to sign in with 
kwallet.

I seriously HOPE that both problems are fixed now, but I got tired of all 
the games with my mail, and dumped it.  However, based on your post, at 
least the second one might not be.  If you canceled the kwallet password 
prompt at some point in that session, it won't ask for it again, it'll 
require the individual account password, with no chance to let kwallet 
handle it once the first prompt is canceled, without restarting akonadi 
or all of kde.

It could also be that the mail server is having problems ATM, and what 
you're seeing is just how they end up being presented to the user via 
akonadi/kmail.

-- 
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.