Kmail loses email, crashes, fails to send, duplicates emails

Hi. I’m running OpenSuSE 12.1 with the Kontact/Kmail version it ships with. I have several problems to report.

  1. It loses email. I learned early on to move my previous ~/.kde to ~/.oldkde or something so it didn’t destroy that directory, so I moved it and then performed an import. It successfully imported all my email (I have quite a few, some as far back as 2005). However, it took a very long time to do so, and to manipulate the directories it generated. It crashed once during this process, and I noticed that it lost my Archive folder (emails from 2005 until 2010). I had to re-import them and then finish the process. It also seemed to import the folders wrong, with emails from 2010 ending up in 2007’s folder, etc.

  2. It crashes. It crashed during import, and has done so several times since then. In KDE’s settings I disabled Nepomuk because that was hogging the machine (I don’t need the stuff in my home folder indexed, thanks…). Still, it’s had several such crashes, too numerous to remember.

  3. It fails to send. I ensured that I had the right settings under SMTP for both my own personal email and for GMail, yet both would fail to send. I would edit the message and try to send with one then another transport method, but neither would work, and I double- and triple-checked my settings each time. One of these failed sessions of trying one then another SMTP resulted in a crash, after which launching Kmail again (I use it inside Kontact) showed that now I have two of that same email I had been trying to send.

  4. It duplicates emails. I remember one time when I received my email (and it downloaded one from GMail) I received four of that email from GMail and then when I clicked on it (not aware that it wasn’t done with the file yet) I ended up having four in my inbox and before the rule that moves it into the subfolder I have it set for. Then that resulted in two disappearing and KMail then asking what to do about the file / email conflict, etc.

  5. It won’t create an mbox that I can use. I was trying to create an mbox folder so I could move my email into it an try a different email client. It won’t let me write to the MBox folder I just created, so I can’t do that.

What do I do about this? Is there a way to downgrade KMail to the previous version that had fewer issues?

Now I’m in a worse predicament. I searched for ways to export my KMail maildir stuff to Thunderbird mbox or Sylpheed-Claws. Tried all methods described. The one script for importing to mbox did not work with Thunderbird. The copy method didn’t work trying to import it to Claws. So basically now I have all this email marooned in Kmail that I really would like to export…

Now I’m in a worse predicament.
But you did make a backup of ~/.kde4 (not ~/.kde) ?

Irrespective, you messages and contacts should still be there.

I am using kdepim4, kmail, kontact etc version 4.4.11 from KDE:/Release:/46/openSUSE_11.4 with KDE-4.7.3 in 11.4. I have installed the same 11.4 versions of kontact-4.4.11 etc. with KDE-4.7.3 in 12.1, but have not done extensive testing yet.

To roll back you will have to remove stuff from ~/.local as well as ~/.kde4.

On Slackware Linux it’s ~/.kde, but yes, I made a backup (and I have an external hard drive on which I use rsync with the backup option with date suffix, etc). So far my solution has been:

Export all email from KMail to Claws:

Move all files (email) to a temporary storage place

find ~/.oldkde/share/apps/kmail/mail -type f -exec cp ‘{}’ ~/tmp ;

Since Claws doesn’t like KMail’s tendency to use weird characters in file names, rename all to something simple

cd ~/tmp; for i in *; do let a=a+1; mv “$i” $a; done

Move to Claws (I think this is the proper destination; correct me if I’m wrong because I forgot)

mkdir ~/.claws/Mail/Imported; mv ~/tmp/* ~/.claws/Mail/Imported/

Then since Claws-mail doesn’t like connecting to my web server’s email, and so I decided to switch clients to Thunderbird, one by one I’m exporting those email folders to mbox and importing to Thunderbird, which works.

On 21/11/11 09:26, radelahunt wrote:
> Then since Claws-mail doesn’t like connecting to my web server’s email,
> and so I decided to switch clients to Thunderbird, one by one I’m
> exporting those email folders to mbox and importing to Thunderbird,
> which works.

I’ve tried Claws-mail and preferred the mail and NNTP side to TB, being
more reliable in dealing with the latter. Unfortunately, I need a decent
calendar and that accompanying Claws needs a lot more work doing on it.
Also, for some odd reason unrelated to CPU use, Claws slows my system
down after a few hours.


Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.3; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306

On 21/11/11 02:16, radelahunt wrote:
> 4) It duplicates emails. I remember one time when I received my email
> (and it downloaded one from GMail) I received four of that email from
> GMail and then when I clicked on it (not aware that it wasn’t done with
> the file yet) I ended up having four in my inbox and before the rule
> that moves it into the subfolder I have it set for. Then that resulted
> in two disappearing and KMail then asking what to do about the file /
> email conflict, etc.

That I can relate to. Tried it again a week ago and soon got fed up
clicking on “left,” “right” or “both.” Thought it might just be because
it was having to catch up on a month’s supply of mail but it was just as
bad once it had caught up. Yet another reason for not using Kmail.


Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.3; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306