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Kmail Address Book Does Not Work


banjo
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I have been using Kmail for years. All my mail contacts are in the address book, or at least they were. Since I have migrated from 2008.1 to 2010.2, KDE 4.4, I cannot get the address book to work at all. It won't even run. I get cryptic errors about nepomuk and Akonadi servers and "D-Bus session bus went down - quitting".

 

What the heck is all of that? I have no idea what all that means or what is is for. I just want my address book back.

 

I cannot "automatically migrate" my kmail accounts because I had to do a clean installation due to my outdated previous version. It appears that there is no other migration path available at all. I have copied config files and copied address book folders and set up accounts again manually and on and on and on. Nothing works. It just won't run. I copied ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/ to ~/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/ and that has no effect. The Akonadi trouble shooting page says to "open the Akonadi Console", but no clue how to do that. It says, "Use krunner, Alt-F2". What the heck does that mean? It says, ""akonadiconsole" konsole". What the heck does that mean?

 

I think that I now hate Kmail and all of the KDE apps that no longer work or run. I installed kdewebdev to get Quanta Plus back and it is not there. What have they done to KDE? Nothing works.

 

I have no need for fancy, floating 3D widgets and cubes with pictures of desktops on them. They seem to have replaced basic functions with frills that I do not need. KDE is as bloated as fnWindows with the same disastrous results.

 

I am looking for other tools to migrate out of KDE to something that might continue to work in the future. I think I might go to Thunderbird for email and Bluefish for web development. It will take me hours of work to move stuff over because there are no migration tools other than the manual copying of stuff.

 

Sorry for the rant, but I have just spent two days trying to do the simple job of migrating my email from the previous Mandy to the current one, and I have failed to get it done. I am beginning to believe that it is hopeless. This ought to be easy. No wonder people are bailing out of KDE 4 in droves to run to Gnome. And from what I hear, the Gnome people are following in their footsteps with their own version of the Bloated Desktop. Ick!

 

Thoughts, helpful hints, dopeslaps, ideas are all welcome, but I think I am done with this bloatware. There might be a Mac in my future.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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Hello Banjo.

 

I too have the same problem with kmail.

It is truly screwed up at the moment regarding addressbook.

It is definitely kmail at fault since I am having the same trouble in both Mandriva2010.2 and Mageia2011-RC.

Both are fully up to date with all updates. I suspect this akonadi thingo being now involved in everything is somehow involved in the screwup but I am not a programmer so I may be wrong.

 

I habitually save kmail, from hidden folder in kde4 and then copy it back into kde4 whenever I do a full clean reinstall including reformatting /home. In the past this caused no problems with kmail but now that does not work entirely because only the email folders are copied back and not the addressbook details.

 

I haven't tried to resolve the problem too much since I presently do not need to send new emails very often and I get round it by clicking reply on an earlier email of the person I wish to correspond with, deleting everything in it and typing a new message.

 

I too might have to look into a kmail alternative if the problem isn't fixed in a kmail update very soon.

 

I notice the release schedule for Mandriva2011 has been pushed back quite drastically now. There is a new schedule listing of beta3 that was never there before so I am guessing they have a heck of a lot of problems on their hands, especially since they got rid of all the real talent they had, and who now form the basis of Mageia. I have found Mageia to be so stable that even though it is at RC stage (Final is due on 1st June and judging by their record so far I think they will deliver on the time they predicted and planned) that I am using it as my main OS already, with Mandriva2010.2 as just a backstop. I long gave up fiddling around with Mandriva2011 -beta2, It was just a waste of time.

 

Cheers. John

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When I first installed 2010.1, I spent close to a day, googling and experimenting before I got the address book working properly. Then I read that more of KDE (including kmail's email client itself) was going to be "integrated" with the nepomuk-strigi-akonadi-mysql monster. Apparently this is so that we can all share our data with the world. No thanks - I don't want to share my data with anyone! I switched to Gnome 2 and now use thunderbird for email (the conversion of existing files was not as difficult as I expected) - it's not "integrated" with anything and runs on most platforms.

 

If, as has been suggested, Gnome 3 is going down this "integrated" and "sharing" road, then I'll be trying XFCE or even LXDE. I just want a stable platform on which I can run a few applications and store my personal files.

 

Jim

 

Edit: I posted what I did to get kmail addressbook working in 2010.1. Scroll down to the fourth post in this thread:

 

http://forum.mandriva.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=131070

 

It seems to have helped a few people. I've no idea if it is still relevant for the latest incarnation of KDE4.

Edited by jkerr82508
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Sorry for the rant, but I was sorely frustrated after spending all day trying to get Kmail running. Thanks for the confirmation that I am not crazy and that it really is messed up.

 

So I bailed on Kmail and started up Thunderbird, and an hour later I had all my accounts working and my address book back. I will have to create my one distribution list again, but that is just a drag and drop in Thunderbird. I am a convert.

 

I still have not found Quanta Plus, so I am looking into switching over to Bluefish. The only thing I will miss in Quanta is the upload manager, which appears to be missing in Bluefish. I will use Filezilla if I have to. I edit the html directly anyway, so I don't need a fancy tool.

 

I could not wait for Mageia because my old hard disk was dying fast and I had to get a replacement going ASAP. I didn't even get all of my files onto my backup disk before the old disk croaked. I had to download my web page using FTP to get some of the files back. And one of my backup disks seems to have failed entirely; the USB will not mount at all.

 

.... and the mouse blinks out on occasion and I have to unplug it to reset it.

 

It has not been a good day at the computer.

 

Thanks for the support

This is still the best Linux forum even though it is quiet.

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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Following your comments about Thunderbird I will give it a try too and see if it suits me as well.

I became a kmail fan years ago because of its simplicity and reliability but that appears to have been now thrown out the window ( :-) pun intended)

 

Cheers. John.

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I have just installed Thunderbird and found it quite slick in setting up. Imported the Backup Addressbook cvs relatively easily.

 

I have not been able to work out how to import all my emails, both sent and received, into Thunderbird as well.

Howto please.

 

Thanks in anticipation. John.

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Same experiences here.

Use Mandriva and KDE for many years.

And together with KDE KMail got introduced.

My wife still used it until lately, when big troubles arose with KMail.

 

I have a workaround, i translated for you from Dutch into some kind of English.

It was the way i converted mails from KMail to Thunderbird.

 

 

In KMail create maps for PostIn, Sent items, Archive and/or others (depends on what maps you have)

Be aware, these new-made maps must be of type "mbox".

Next step is to copy messages from the original maps to the new-made-ones.

 

In Dolphin (or whatever filemanager): copy the mbox-maps to the thunderbird-profile-map:

(/home/.thunderbird/pkh8vohu.default, or some name similar ) of Thunderbird.

You can find the mbox-maps in:

/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail

 

Addressbook imported by use of LDIF.

 

Wish you all good luck and a shiny Thunderibrd-experience.

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From memory this is what I did to move my kmail mail store to thunderbird:

 

1. Since I was using kmail's default maildir format, I had to convert each folder into mbox format.

 

For each existing folder I created a new mbox folder (e.g. for "Friends" a new "Friends2"). (When you create a new folder in kmail, you are asked to select a format.) Then I copied all of the emails in Friends to Friends2.

 

To make them easier to find, I copied these new mbox files from ~./kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail to a new folder ~/kmail-mbox-files.

 

Of course, if you are already using the mbox format, then that is all unnecessary.

 

2. Then I installed the ImportExportTool extension for thunderbird, and imported the mbox files into thunderbird following the general idea of the instructions here:

 

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders#Install_the_ImportExportTool_extension

 

Once you've installed the extension in thunderbird, you can scroll down to the "Import the Folders" section on that page. The intervening sections don't apply in this case.

 

 

 

Bruno Cornec (a Mandriva/Mageia contributor) has written a script:

 

http://brunocornec.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/migrating-from-kmail-to-thunderbird/

 

I have no personal experience of using that.

 

Jim

Edited by jkerr82508
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I have done this by creating copies of my maildir folders in the mbox format as described above and then copying the mbox files directly into the "Local Folders" mail folder of Thunderbird, e.g.

 

.thunderbird/7nt8vv6t.default/Mail/Local Folders/

 

I was unable to put them anywhere but "Local Folders" and have it work, so I dropped them in there and then opened Thunderbird and used it to create subfolders and moved them into subfolders.

 

Be careful when you do this. I think that the first time you create "Local Folders" it wipes out whatever is in there. A more formal import tool might be a safer bet rather than messing around under the table.

 

If you have a lot of legacy mail folders this can take a while, but it is a one way trip for me.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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I have progressed far enough with 2010.2 to try installing some simple packages. The package manager goes through the motions of doing the installation, and then the applications are not there.

 

I installed kdewebdev and Quanta never showed up. I installed kdegames4 and kdegames4-core and nothing showed up. I installed xcockroach, xfishtank, and xpenguins and only xpenguins showed up in the games menu.... and it does not do anything. These are not important packages, but other invisible packages are, like Quanta Plus.

 

Anybody else having any issues with installing packages from the 2010.2 repositories? Am I looking at the wrong repositories or mirrors? I have Main, Contrib, Non-free, and PLF plus their updates enabled.

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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One thing I have never had a problem with is installing packages in Mandriva2010.2.

 

The only prominent problem I have with it is I cannot get wifi working (PC not laptop) even though I had it working prior to doing a clean reinstall. I have it working in Mageia2011 RC however.

 

There is a minor weird thing though. I use 6 desktops and number 5 and 6 have suddenly got almost full screen black panels over them. You can still see some of the background picture and part of the weather plasmoid. Nothing seems to get rid of the black panel.

 

I endorse Daniels suggestion. When I had similar troubles to yours in the dim past. I usually found that deleting the ineffective packages and then selecting a different download site, fixed the problem.

 

Cheers. John.

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