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so deleted everything ? including $HOME/.kde/share/config/kmail* $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kmail
do you use kontact, or just the stand alone kmail part ?
have you checked any permissions of config or storage directories, make sure you own the file/directories ?
have you done any kind of variation from the base slackware installation ?
by default kmail should report any debugging output to the shell if you open it from command line, so try opening kmail from a prompt and see if it reports anything peculiar to you.
i do not have as much an answer, as directions or ideas to point you towards.
All that you have suggested had been done before I posted the original message. At this point I've moved all the e-mail files to Thunderbird and completely removed KMail from the system. Too bad as I prefer KMail, but if I can't depend on it, then it is of little value.
There are times when I think of using XP as it seems I spend most of my time in Linux trying to do what is easily done in winblows.
I do a great deal of scanning and I've made previous posts about the poor quality scanning with Sane. Xsane itself is a good program with more bells and whistles than most people will ever use, but the Sane drivers leave a get deal to be desired. At this point I've tried 3 different scanners, one "supported, but not fully," and two that are "fully supported." The results are the same with all three; poor, very poor. Brighter down the middle of the page and darker towards the edges and colors that are muddy at best. Xsane/sane is much slower and the .pdf file sizes are 1/3 again bigger (or more) than those done with the HP software in XP at the same dpi.
Just for chuckles last week I booted over to XP for first time in months and downloaded and installed OpenOffice, The Gimp, VLC, Opera, Thunderbird and Acrobat for winblows. They all ran better under XP than they do in Linux. I was very surprised, especially with OpenOffice, The Gimp, and VLC. One example that immediately comes to mind is the refocus plugin for The Gimp. I've used it in Linux and can barely see the difference. It is there, but you have to put your nose to the screen to see the improvement. I took the same photo and ran refocus in Gimp/Linux and booted to XP and ran refocus in Gimp/XP, and in XP I could see the difference while leaning back in my chair, feet on the desk. Ditto, Impress/Presentation in OpenOffice. Powerpoint files that wouldn't play properly in OpenOffice/Linux, play as they should in OpenOffice/XP. Even the sounds works as it should, which has always been a problem in OpenOffice/Linux.
I even installed what is available of KDE 4.1.1, for winblows, The games work, but not much else. It seems such a waste that the developers seem to be more interested in getting the games to work than the software one needs to get their daily work done. Maybe the games are easier to develop for, or port to, windows? I really don't know. And the size of the files for Icons seems such a waste. The file for the icons for KDE 4x is over 60 megs in size. For icons?!
KMail was not included in the package. Kopete only worked it ICQ, but not Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Everything else, but the games, was limited in use or didn't work at all.
BTW, the new version of VLC, 0.9.3, is very nice, and it plays everything I've thrown at it, unlike how it performs in Linux where it will play this file, but not that file, etc., etc., etc....
Linux is a far better operating system than windows.there is no doubt about it, but it seems since windows is the largest market, the OpenSource software developers are writing first for windows and secondly for Linux.
If my dislike of microsoft and their lack of business ethics wasn't so deep, I would bite the bullet and switch to winblows... but I'll continue to fight the "evil empire" and stick with Linux.
Last edited by cwizardone; 09-29-2008 at 09:43 AM.
Smart-ass remarks don't contribute anything to the conversation.
I've been using Linux since 1995 and have been a big fan of the OpenSource movment, but, maybe you, and a few others around here, need to accept the fact that Linux is not perfect.
You have your opinion and I have mine. It would be a boring world if we all agreed on everything.
Just for chuckles last week I booted over to XP for first time in months and downloaded and installed OpenOffice, The Gimp, VLC, Opera, Thunderbird and Acrobat for winblows. They all ran better under XP than they do in Linux. I was very surprised, especially with OpenOffice, The Gimp, and VLC.
I don't recognize any of this.
My scanner works perfectly, Thunderbird runs without a hitch (smoother than in Windows), Mplayer -which I use- eats anything you throw at it (with good quality).
So either you have had a lot of bad luck or bad karma.
I'm sorry I don't have an answer for your problem with K-Mail, but I can assure you one thing: mail that doesn't get fetched (with any program) is not a Linux-only-thing. I'm a mod. at a Dutch Mozilla forum and this kind of shit just happens. Very often on Windows too.
For the people who are trying to help it is often frustrating when all suggestions made have absolutely no impact at all and the problem persists. Sometimes people are so desperate they even reinstall Windows to get a problem solved (which usually does not help).
I don't recognize any of this.
My scanner works perfectly, Thunderbird runs without a hitch (smoother than in Windows), Mplayer -which I use- eats anything you throw at it (with good quality).
...
The scanner problem has been on going and like I said, I've tried 3 different scanners and the result are all the same. After hours of working at it, I can now produce reasonable document scans, but, again, as I said, the files are much bigger than if done with HP's software in XP.
Never really cared for MPlayer for some reason. Most users rave about it, but I prefer VLC and the new version of VLC has become my default player for just about everything. However, Amarok is excellent for audio only.
I'm not a big fan of Thunderbird either, but I'll use it until the KMail problem is solved. Maybe it will grow on me.
Of all the apps I've ran on KDE, Kopete and KMail are my two favorites. Opera's new 9.60 beta 1, also performs very well with KDE. Fastest browser I've ever used.
There are a lot of positive things about Linux/KDE, it just happens that two of the things I do almost daily cannot be included in that category. Such is life.
So SMTP (port 25) is working with KMail but not POP3 (port 110).... Usually most people have the opposite problem --- they can receive but not send.
Are there any clues in your logs such as /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, /var/log/errors, /var/log/mail? As root open several Konsole tabs and run tail -f logname with each log you want to monitor and then attempt to fetch mail with KMail.
Is there something awry with your SSL/TLS configuration?
Do you have multiple identities but only one POP3 address, which does not work with all of the identities?
Try this experiment: As a different user (root, whatever), from the command line send an email to your user system account.
First ensure you have KMail configured to fetch local system mail: Settings, Configure KMail..., Accounts, Receiving, Add button, Local mailbox check box. Accept the defaults unless you know differently, which will point to /var/spool/mail/username.
Next ensure you have sendmail running: /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail start
Then as a different user from the command line send a local system email. For example:
echo "This is a test. " | mail -s "Test Message" username.
Restart KMail. Manually check mail if auto-checking is disabled. You should receive a local system email. This does not test POP3 but at least should confirm that KMail can fetch mail.
1. I'm trying to retrieve e-mail from google so
the pop port is 995 and the smtp port is 465.
2. I've looked through the various logs and can't find anything that appears to be connected to the problem. However, when starting KMail in a console, the follow messages appear before KMail comes up:
And it goes on and on repeating itself. Unfortunately, I have no idea what all that means.
I tried posting the entire error message, but the board software reject it saying, "You have included 33 images in your message. You are limited to using 10 images so please go back and correct the problem and then continue again.
Images include use of smilies, the vB code [img] tag and HTML <img> tags. The use of these is all subject to them being enabled by the administrator."
3. No. I've gone over the SSL/TLS configuration numerous times and it is correct.
4. No. Separate addresses for each account.
5. Your sendmail idea did worked, so KMail apparently can fetch mail, it just won't fetch for the account IDs I have setup.
Where does KDE store the ID information?
I've tried deleting everything I could find relating to KMail using the results of a file search to find the location of various files, but apparently KDE hides the KMail IDs in a file I haven't been able to locate. I've gone so far as to delete the entire .kde directory under my user name, but the IDs live on.
Again, many thanks for your response.
Last edited by cwizardone; 10-01-2008 at 06:31 AM.
I have to head out for several hours, so please accept this quick reply.
I am the blind leading the blind here because I am in the process of migrating my email to KMail. In other words, I am toying and experimenting a lot and I am experiencing some of the same headaches as you but for different reasons. I don't claim to be a KMail or email guru.
Quote:
Your sendmail idea did worked, so KMail apparently can fetch mail, it just won't fetch for the account IDs I have setup.
I discovered the local mail trick recently as I wanted to fetch my local system mail through KMail. I can waggle my way through the command line mailx, but that is cumbersome. If I am going to use KMail as my regular email client, I want direct access to my local mail too. KMail supports that option nicely.
An important trick is that a local mail transport agent (MTA) must be running, which for the stock Slackware is sendmail. Sendmail requires that a domain name be listed in /etc/hosts otherwise sendmail will take a long time to initialize. I added "localdomain" in my hosts file. Without a local MTA local system mail will not operate.
Related, I discovered two tricks to forward root's system email to my normal user account system mail. As all of my root email is informational, such as from cron jobs and scripts, I wanted that email forwarded to my normal account.
I created a one-line text file named /root/.forward containing the text normaluser@hostname.
I then added an alias in /etc/mail/aliases:
# Who gets root's mail.
root: normaluser
Of course, replace normaluser with an actual login name and hostname with the actual host name of the box.
Then I ran the newaliases command to refresh the mail alias database.
That process forwards all of root's system mail to my normal login account. Then configuring KMail allows me to fetch that mail.
Quote:
Where does KDE store the ID information?
I have found several places where KMail stores data:
Those latter two files likely are the ones hiding from you.
I suspect if you delete all three files, or carefully edit them manually (with KMail not running), you might be able to resolve some of the problems.
Another trick I discovered is to temporarily disable my paranoia and allow each account I am testing to connect without TLS/SSL security and to use clear test passwords, which is the default. This eliminates a layer of troubleshooting obfuscation. Get past that point before enabling TLS/SSL.
That you were able to fetch local mail is a start. You are not receiving any error messages or message boxes, however. That tends to imply KMail is connecting to somewhere or programmatically is acting as such --- or is not even trying to connect.
Here is a silly thought, only because I have done things like this: in the Accounts/Receiving section of your email account (Modify button), is the Include in manual check check box enabled?
Similarly, in the same section, is the Identity selected to the correct Identity?
I noticed this evening as I continued my own exploration of KMail that the Identities and Accounts sections are interdependent. For example, after creating an identity, and then a receiving and sending account, I have to return to the identity to change the sending transport. Otherwise all outgoing messages will be routed through the default smtp account, which for a while for me as I tinkered was my local account.
I also did not fully understand that in Kmail, identities are the email addresses whereas accounts are the mail service providers. I come from Eudora and there is no distinction, just accounts. I don't like the way I have to go back and forth between identities and accounts to get everything to function correctly, but I think now I've beaten myself enough learning the distinction.
Another killer for me for a while was when I created a new email, the default address was always used. Makes sense for people who have one address but for multiple addresses, remembering to change that all the time quickly became a nuisance. I was sending emails as local user from my localbox@localdomain because my local account was the default. Not cool. So I created an identity and receiving and sending accounts named Bogus with a bogus address. Now when I forget to change the sending address, sendmail immediately responds with a postmaster error message. That too is a nuisance, but not as much as sending from the wrong address.
This might sound strange, but I noticed when I forgot to select the Apply button when modifiying either the Identity or Accounts section, that the modifications would not be seen in the other section. So when you configure both sections, always select the Apply button before toggling back to the other section. Terrible design.
I don't yet understand or appreciate the need for such a complicated configuration. Why not just one dialog box to enter pop3 and smtp mail server url, and account name and password?
All of that probably does not help you much, but my sidetracking was to make a point. There is interplay between the two sections.
I ran KMail from the command line in Konsole. Almost no screen messages of substance --- nothing to help troubleshoot. I searched the web and seems many people have asked where KMail keeps its logs and the only answer I found is ~/.xsession-errors. I looked in that log and again there is almost nothing about running KMail. I am puzzled that KMail has no log of any kind to help troubleshoot.
Perhaps somebody here at LQ can explain how to use a sniffer to watch a connection with an email client.
Here is a silly thought, only because I have done things like this: in the Accounts/Receiving section of your email account (Modify button), is the Include in manual check check box enabled?
Yes, but that shouldn't have anything to do
with the problem. That simply means you want
KMail to check that account when you click on
the "check mail" button. I have always set it
up that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodsman
Similarly, in the same section, is the Identity selected to the correct Identity?
Yes, I very familiar with properly setting up
the IDs and Accounts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodsman
I noticed this evening as I continued my own exploration of KMail that the Identities and Accounts sections are interdependent.....
....I was sending emails as local user from my localbox@localdomain because my local account was the default. Not cool. So I created an identity and receiving and sending accounts named Bogus with a bogus address. Now when I forget to change the sending address, sendmail immediately responds with a postmaster error message. That too is a nuisance, but not as much as sending from the wrong address.
In the Identities section pick the ID you want
to modify and then go to the advance tab. The
last box is labeled, "special transport."
Put a check in the smaller box to its left and then use the dropdown arrow on the right to pick the transport agent/method/whatever (that you setup under accounts) that you want to use for that particular identity, then hit "apply" and then "OK."
At this point I'm pretty much burned out on the
whole thing. This afternoon I started having
printer problems out of the blue (can't find gs_init.ps file) and at this point I'm in XP (gasp!)
and will remain here until I calm down and/or get
sick of XP and go back to Linux.
Last edited by cwizardone; 10-02-2008 at 11:50 PM.
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