Kmail without kdewallet?

[cr]

On Thursday, 7 September 2017 6:40:38 AM NZST Duncan wrote:
> cr posted on Wed, 06 Sep 2017 23:58:24 +1200 as excerpted:
> > I'm running Kmail 5.2.3 and kdewallet under Debian 9.   Can I safely
> > uninstall kdewallet?   (Kmail is the only program I run that uses it).
> > 
> > Reason is, I usually start Kmail on my server via ssh from some laptop
> > or other.   If I go to fetch mail from my ISP, Kmail opens a box for my
> > ISP's mail password (the same as my previous installation of Kmail 4
> > did).
> > However, IF I've previously logged in to my server, kdewallet opens a
> > box for its password on the server instead, which is a nuisance (and
> > much bafflement before I accidentally found this out).    (I recall
> > Kmail 5 persuaded me to install kdewallet when I installed it).
> > 
> > So I hope uninstalling kdewallet will just cause Kmail to open a mail
> > password box on my laptop each time.
> 
> kdewallet, or kwallet?  At least on gentoo, which tries to stick with
> upstream naming, there appears to be no such package as kdewallet.
> 
> But there is a kwallet, one of the kde-frameworks, and while I switched
> from kmail to something (being claws-mail in my case) that could actually
> handle email without losing it in the mid kde4 era, when kmail jumped the
> akonadi shark and started losing mail, and along with that switch from
> kmail I ultimately exterminated everything akonadi or kdepim (due to
> akonadi deps) related related from my system...
> 
> And even tho I run a rather light plasma desktop without baloo, and don't
> actually have anything stored in kwallet now...
> 
> I still have kwallet installed, because it's a dependency of plasma-
> desktop and plasma-workspace, and I have those installed because I run a
> kde-plasma based desktop.  And okular seems to require it too, for some
> reason.
> 
> So I'm guessing you'll need kwallet installed if you run a plasma
> desktop, and it's likely to fail to start without it.
> 
> Tho perhaps not... an ldd /usr/bin/plasmashell | grep wallet doesn't turn
> up any of the kwallet libs in the load list, so maybe it doesn't actually
> need them?  I suppose I could try uninstalling it and see what actually
> fails... then if that works, I could try installing a null-package to
> fill the deps and see what breaks in the build...
> 
> Meanwhile, if you run some other desktop environment and simply run kmail
> because you prefer it, then it's possible that you can uninstall kwallet.
> I wouldn't have any idea what the current state is, because as I said I
> quit with the kmail when it started losing my mail after jumping the
> akonadi shark, in the mid kde4 era.

Hi Duncan

Thanks for your comments.

I installed Debian 9 on my server and it came with kmail 5.   I use mostly 
Gnome apps, currently with LXDE desktop, Kmail's the only kde program I run 
aside from k3b.    And it really is 'kdewallet'.

I usually run kmail ssh'd in from a laptop (I have several) running older 
Debian, Linux Mint Debian Edition, or some other debian-ish distro.   I almost 
jumped ship from Kmail 4 like you, but I couldn't find another emailer that 
claimed to use Maildir reliably.   I found Kmail 4 ran intolerably slowly via 
ssh on wireless until I found to invoke ssh with the -C (compression) option.   

I keep all my mail files (and other data) on a different server partition, 
which makes it very easy to install an all-new operating system in a spare 
partition without having to migrate any data.   I just have to point kmail at 
the mail store - which involves some fiddling around in cryptic config files.

At some point I think I will try uninstalling kdewallet and see what breaks...   

Chris Rodliffe