I do agree with Yalla-One.

It is dangerous to give advice which does irrecoverable damage to a system. If possible, one should give a non-destructive alternative (like `mv .kde .kde-old` instead of `rm -rf .kde`). The result is the same with respect to troubleshooting, but the way back is easy as well.

Assuming a certain knowledge of the people in the tread might be possible, but you cannot assume anything about people who'll just read this thread or who'll find it later through the search feature.

Finally, finding the "real" solution is giving back to the community, which should be the aim of those who use free software.

Glad to see the problem resolved!

At least you confirmed that something external to KMail was triggering the events witnessed. But curiously, why only this one particular user and nobody else?

With respect to the various side comments in this thread, I know from many years working as a tool-carrying technician that learning sound troubleshooting procedures is part art and part knowledge and experience. Of course, the art part comes into play only after many years of experience. Years of experience merely allows people to seemingly skip steps in the troubleshooting process but in actuality they are performing those steps silently based upon experience. To inexperienced outside observers the results often seem like magic or wizardry.

Experience and knowledge play a significant role with computers because computers are complex tools, and the symptoms of one process can mask the symptoms of other processes and hence, mask root causes of problems. Reductionist or dialectic techniques almost always fail when evaluating complex systems. This is true with any complex system, including human social systems.

I agree that some people who participate in forums tend to provide quick and short answers not so much to help but only to hear themselves or to improve message counts. However, I think the majority of people who provide short answers do so in sincerity, but also with little experience in troubleshooting. Thus, their answers tend to be well-intended but ineffective.

I am not saying this is the case here at LQ or even within the Slackware forum or this thread in particular, but only that generally some people pipe in and offer advice when probably they should not. This often is the case even at the family dinner table or company water cooler. The reason is simply that humans are social creatures and possess an innate desire to participate. Much like the nature of the scorpion in Aesop's Fables that stung the helpful fox, this desire to participate is simply the nature of being human. The law of averages requires that some unhelpful advice will appear occasionally in such discussions.

OTOH, just as many people who own or operate a car are not auto mechanics, so too are many people using computers "mere" users. As such they are not going to possess much training or experience in troubleshooting computers. Thus, a reasonable attitude and perspective when presenting problems to open forums such as LQ is perhaps for solicitors to exhibit a bit more patience than they would with more experienced users. That is, there always will be background noise and unproductive opinions or advice in such open forums. And in such situations some skills in diplomacy usually prove valuable. The skill of diplomacy is largely a combination of skills of learning to communicate effectively, listening, thinking purposely, and striving to understand others. As I approach the mid-century mark in age I am convinced that for most people mastering the skill of diplomacy requires an entire lifetime. In that respect, I too am still learning the skill of diplomacy---and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Please forgive me for indulging in a little philosophy.

Hi Woodsman,

Thanks for your thoughts - they seem to the point and accurate and I agree. Having used Linux for only a year and a half, Slackware less than a year I'm still finding myself watching in silent awe when wizards are performing magic on their Linux systems or clearly watching their crystal ball in envisioning what's wrong on ours. As you say, this comes down to experience.

For the technical side of the problem, as the majority of the ControlCentre settings are user-specific and do not require root, it turns out that this user has played around with the Resources, identified the IMAP calendar sync-setting, and enabled it to sync calendar between Outlook (work PC) and Kontact (home PC). I never thought to ask - she never thought to bring it up.

I have left the KDE bug open, as I believe enabling such a link should not cause all instances of Korganizer (even the Reminder Daemon) to start a full version of KMail, but I suspect this is buried sufficiently deep in the code that we might not find a fix until KDE 4.0.

However, I'm happy having just identified the error, provided a (hopefully) useful bug report to the community, and disabled the user KDE setting thus fixing the problem.

Thanks again for the valuable community feedback I've come to appreciate and depend on in this forum!

-Y1

I would agree that sometimes people just throw their input in to increase post count. In this forum I would not say that is a problem. As a quick example, I signed up Dec 2003 and I have 313 posts. Someone else, signed up Dec 2004 399. Not exactly post whores around here.

As for troubleshooting, yes I know more then my fair share. As a Communication/Navigation/Mission systems avionics technician on HH-60 Pavehawk helicopters I've ran into my share of troubleshooting experiences. One of those is to evaluate your options first prioritizing them in order of severity. If the easiest thing doesn't show results then going a little deeper into the problem as required. As an example I many times see write-ups from Air Crew reporting their VHF or UHF radios are able to transmit but not receive.
This type of problem raises many questions immediately. What was the other aircraft? Were other frequencies tried? Did any other radios experience this? What frequencies were both aircraft using? Did they hear anything at all(scratchy tone, buzz, etc)? Did they see any faults on the screen of the VHF control box(RT fault, Fan fail)? Could the other aircraft TX/RX with other freq's fine? From asking all these questions of the Pilots in a couple minutes I go through the possible causes of errors for this problem. Depending on the answers of these questions I go through what I will look at first. Usually I'll check the switch positions of the various panels. ICS(Intercommunication System) control box will sometimes have the specific radio position muted. Would explain why they couldn't hear anybody but everyone heard them(I see this alot). I check the other various panels, VHF retransmission panel, Antenna selection switch, etc. I also check the connections on the R/T's(receiver/transmitter) and control boxes.

If still I do not find anything on the physical connections with the cannon plugs then I move into wiring, checking for shorts to other wires or possibly cut wires. This is always my last resort. If you're checking wires then there could be a break in a wire that is 1 of 150 that is 10 feet down the line under floors. Finding it and fixing it is not fun and is why this is the last ditch effort to find a problem. This can take a long time to find a solution at this point. Time I don't usually have the luxury of. There is also more then one aircraft with other problems of their own.

This is what makes my job more unique then most other people's. You might have a deadline for something that is the end of the week, next month or quarter. My deadlines are only a few hours, if I'm lucky. Many times an aircraft is about to take off and may have a problem that I *have* to fix within literally less than 5 minutes or that aircraft doesn't fly it's mission and it reflects badly on our units mission effectiveness(no pressure right . Our mission, Search and Rescue. If my aircraft dont fly because their navigation system does not work then they can't do things like save people in Hurricane Katrina. 300+ people rescued there by my unit alone. If I don't do my job absolutely and quickly then real people are affected. This is my job every day.

What was the point of the above? Well one thing I know when *communicating* with other people on a problem, especially when all other ideas have been tried, is to throw out anything you can think of to try. Even the most ridiculous of ideas may have some merit. I said to delete the directory. It obviously got people thinking. They said, "No a better idea would be to just move it". A good idea too that went off of what I said. Even something that is ridiculous can get you into thinking about other avenues to address a problem that you may not have thought of otherwise. Evaluating everything is necessary. You don't want to do that most drastic measure but you may end up having to one way or another.

And I am glad you found the solution to your problem. I really am.

-------------
A1C Matthew Lares,
563rd Maintenance Squadron
Search and Rescue Operations
Davis Monthan AFB - Tucson, AZ