[Bug 238217] New: Minor mysql startup problem prevents kmail from running

[Davor Cubranic]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=238217

           Summary: Minor mysql startup problem prevents kmail from
                    running
           Product: kmail
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kdepim-bugs at kde.org
        ReportedBy: cubranic at acm.org


Version:            (using KDE 4.4.2)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

I originally reported this bug in Ubuntu Launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/akonadi/+bug/578357

I am opening it here as a wider issue: Akonadi is very fragile in the face of
mysql startup problems, and that has a knock-on effect of preventing basic user
applications (mail, PIM) from running.

The most visible symptom of the problem was that after starting up KMail, I
would get an error dialog stating that Akonadi is not running. After closing
the dialog, the app would close also.

I started investigating, and got voluminous, but not very helpful error output
when running 'akonadictl start' from the command line. (I'll attach a copy.)
Further poking and twiddling with apparmor and other workarounds suggested in
various bugs and forums was unsuccessful. Eventually, I stumbled upon mysql.err
in ~/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/ with the following contents:

100519 9:49:38 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
 InnoDB: Error: log file ./ib_logfile1 is of different size 0 0 bytes
 InnoDB: than specified in the .cnf file 0 67108864 bytes!
 100519 9:49:38 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.
 100519 9:49:38 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE
failed.
 100519 9:49:38 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported table type: innodb
 100519 9:49:38 [ERROR] Aborting
100519 9:49:38 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi: Shutdown complete

File 'ib_logfile1' was indeed of size zero. Deleting it and 'ib_logfile0', and
then restarting 'akonadictl' seemed to fix the problem and I now have a working
mail reader.

I don't know how the log file got corrupted, but the system should be more
robust than that. I mean, having a zero-size or corrupted log file does not
need to be an unrecoverable error!

It's completely reasonable in such a situation to delete it and proceed with
startup. The database should still be in a consistent state, and the worst that
could happen is that the last few transactions are missing. Or at the very
least notify the user what the real problem is. As it is, akonadi server's
output is utterly unhelpful, and it took me forever to find Akonadi's
mysql.err, where the problem was actually clearly identified.

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