After Updating KDE FW to 5.20 and Plasma to 5.6 (with Qt to 5.6 as well) Akonadi "doesn't work"

[jaybarkei]

Hello,

Yesterday I updated My Leap 42.1 Installation to KDE Framework 5.20 and Plasma to 5.6, after I found out through forum posts that from now on KDE Framework and Plasma are being built against Qt 5.6, which is not part of the packages in the respective repos any more, but has to be installed separately from one of the many repos containing different states of Qt 5.6 (wouldn't it be nice if such changes were announced somewhere officially - I heard there were such things called "blogs" - instead of being rather clandestine tips you have to search for in a forum ).

Installation worked fine and everything seems to work well - except KDE Kontact which notified me that Akonadi is not "working properly". Since the configuration has been okay and working fine since about 2 years, I looked for a missing lib or something, but the yast installation tool reported all dependencies as okay.

So Akonadi seems to be partially working (I get what looks like cached data in the applikations within kontact), but no interaction with the programs is possible, and the "Details"-Button shows no reaction at all...

Any ideas???

Thanks a lot!

Jay

[bearymore]

I have done the same update and have the same problem. I'm using KDE:/Frameworks5/OpenSUSE_Leap_42.1 and KDE:/QT5/OpenSUSE_Leap_42.1 which another thread said must be used together. I used the switch system packages button in Yast2 to make sure that all the relevant packages came from the relevant repositories. I get the Akonadi doesn't work screen in KOrganizer and KMail. In addition (oddly) I have a weather widget on my panel which comes up as needing configuration, even though it is configured. Furthermore, "akonadictl status" shows akonadi as running. After "akonadictl stop", status still shows akonadi server and ctl as running, and "akonadictl restart" just hangs.

Here is the strange thing (and I've done a lot of experimentation to show this is true) -- if I go into Yast2, search for all akonadi packages and do a forced update and then log out of KDE and log back in, KMail, Korganizer, and the weather widget all open normally. However, my system activities list shows two instatiations of plasmashell one of which has the status "stopped". This one can be killed with no effect on the system. To get KMail and KOrganizer to work, you must do both steps - logging out and back in without the update or doing the update without logging out and back in doesn't work. Also, a complete reboot will always cause the system to come up with the Akonadi problem and must be followed by the update, logout, login procedure to get KMail and KOrganizer to work.

Very strange...

[bearymore]

I had my Kontact applications installed from the KDE:/Applications repository. I reverted them to the standard ones from the Leap update repository. This seems to have solved the problem -- either that or the latest updates to 5.2 and Plasma 5.6 fixed it. Does this work for you, or was the problem solved just through regular updates?

[jaybarkei]

Right now the problem is not solved for me.

How did you do return to the previous version? In the Leap Update Repo is 5.12.2 , in the KDE/Applicatons it's 5.12.3 and while preparing the update, yast2 asks for all kontact and akonadi apps to be installed. Did you only change the kontact apps (kontact, kmail, kaddressbook, korganizer ...)? Or did you also revert the Akonadi-part?

[wolfi323]

I don't think the Qt5, Plasma5, or KF5 updates should have any influence on Akonadi working or not (and it does still work fine on my 13.2 system).

But make sure you don't mix versions.
I.e. kdepim5 (and its applications like kontact5, kmail5, and so on) won't work with Akonadi4 (package akonadi-runtime, while Akonadi5 is in akonadi-server) and vice-versa.
And make sure you don't mix versions between the standard Leap repos and KDE:Applications either.

Also, if you ever started Akonadi5, it's probably not possible to revert to Akonadi4 without wiping the database.
Upgrades are supported, but not downgrades...

PS: That KDE:Frameworks5 requires KDE:Qt5 is nothing new, actually it does since the repos exist. But Leap 42.1 did contain the latest version of Qt5 (5.5.x), so it was not really necessary. This has changed with the upgrade to Qt 5.6.0 though.

And it is documented (meanwhile) at https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KDE_repositories.
There was one problem though: the Wiki was locked for a while because of spam attacks, so the page couldn't be updated either...

[peteh100]

This happened to me a few times in those same circumstances but as far as I could tell Akonadi was working but Kontact wasn't finding it. It seems to have righted itself now and it was intermittent anyway.

[jaybarkei]

THanks for your remarks, wolfi323, but I think you missed the point.

I'm not the "newbie" my profile might indicate, I just happen to be able to find out how to solve most of the problems by myself, or live with them. But this one I don't understand, but seemingly I am not alone in that.
So I don't "mix versions", as this is one of the first things you learn. I know quite well the differences between KDEPim 4 and 5 and the respective akonadi versions.
And I am not talking about any kind of "downgrade".

So please don't make up a problem where there is none. (Still there is the fact that for someone who was used to the Opensuse practice of bundling KDE with the respective Qt versions in the same repo - as it was always indicated on the KDE repository pages - the change of policy to unbundling them into different repos comes unexpected and surprising, especially if, as there are, various possibly relevant Qt 5.x repos exist. And I know of at least one case - documented in this forum - where the wrong repo was initially indicated. This doesn't get any better, if the corresponding wiki pages have "meanwhile" been altered to reflect the change. The right time would have been "before", not "someday".)

But be that, as it may: I checked again for the repos I had connected and activated (everything okay) and (again) did a change of system-packages to these repos, with a subsequent install of some packages which had nothing to do with KDEPim or Akonadi, so: nothing changed, problem still there.

Since I have all my KDE Applications from the KDE/Applications Repository with Ver. 15.12.3, I don't want to go back to Leap/Update where there is 15.2.2, and I don't think mixing these repos is of any good.

peteh100 is right: akonadi is loaded, but (in my case) with the exception of 2 processes (archive_mail_agent & maildir_ressource0) completely inactive, kontact is also loaded but obviously doing nothing. Seems like the two just don't connect, which is why e.g. kmail does not show my mail-accounts which are (following the list in ksysguar) obviously loaded by akonadi (and fortunately no mails are retrieved, so I still have chance to communicate).

But nothing has "righted itself" by now, and I still don't understand, what's going on here.

So still: any ideas (except from: wait, someday it will wok out ...)

Thanks, Jay

[bearymore]

I am assuming that I had a mixed library somewhere and that it had to do with something that was updated on March 29 as that is when the problem started for me (possibly one of the libkf5 calendar, notes, and mail libraries which were installed that day). At any rate, when I reverted everything KDEPIM related from 12.3 in the application repository to 12.2 in the main update library, the problem stopped. Today, I changed all my KDE apps to the KDE:/Applications repository by using switch system packages in Yast2 to make sure that nothing was mixed. So now all my apps are 12.3 and I am having no problem at all. I do seem to recall that when the problem started, there may have been a package that resided in both the QT5 or KF5 repository and the apps repository and that I wasn't sure that I wasn't using the wrong one, but there is no such package like that today, so I very well might be remembering wrong. At any rate, on Monday everything was working fine. On Tuesday some update caused the problem, yesterday after shifting KOrganizer, KNotes, KMail, and KContact to 12.2 from the main update repository everything worked fine, and today, having made sure that all my applications were coming from the applications directory by doing a switch system packages to the Applications repository, things are still working fine.

As a note, it was clear that Akonadi was running, but that interaction with the programs was blocked. One could see the mail directories and so forth showing up behind the grayed out area of the screen.

[wolfi323]

This happened to me a few times in those same circumstances but as far as I could tell Akonadi was working but Kontact wasn't finding it. It seems to have righted itself now and it was intermittent anyway.

Just one thing: if you upgrade to Akonadi5 (and KDEPIM5) in the running session and used Akonadi4 before, the Akonadi4 server is still running (and cannot be quit either any more).
Logging out and in should "fix" that.

Maybe that was the reason why it was intermittent and righted itself out...

THanks for your remarks, wolfi323, but I think you missed the point.

Did I?
I just made some general remarks that might have been the cause.

If that's not the reason in your case, sorry.

I didn't want to implicate anything about your knowledge...

(Still there is the fact that for someone who was used to the Opensuse practice of bundling KDE with the respective Qt versions in the same repo - as it was always indicated on the KDE repository pages - the change of policy to unbundling them into different repos comes unexpected and surprising, especially if, as there are, various possibly relevant Qt 5.x repos exist. And I know of at least one case - documented in this forum - where the wrong repo was initially indicated. This doesn't get any better, if the corresponding wiki pages have "meanwhile" been altered to reflect the change. The right time would have been "before", not "someday".)

I hope you are aware that you are using untested semi-official repos there, that are provided at a best-effort basis.
You cannot expect everything working all the time, in fact you actually have to expect problems.

If you want a stable system, stay with the standard repos.

And as I wrote: KDE:Frameworks5 is built against KDE:Qt5 since it exists. The case was just different for Leap 42.1 until recently...

But be that, as it may: I checked again for the repos I had connected and activated (everything okay) and (again) did a change of system-packages to these repos, with a subsequent install of some packages which had nothing to do with KDEPim or Akonadi, so: nothing changed, problem still there.

Ok. So you are having kdepim5 and akonadi-server installed?
You failed to answer that. Just a repo switch might not switch all of that properly.

What does "akonadictl --version" say?
Does the problem exist on a fresh user account?

Since I have all my KDE Applications from the KDE/Applications Repository with Ver. 15.12.3, I don't want to go back to Leap/Update where there is 15.2.2, and I don't think mixing these repos is of any good.

Yes, and you shouldn't go back. Although a switch between 15.12.2 and 15.12.3 shouldn't cause any problem, in both directions.

[peteh100]

I've had Kontact5 (and all the plugins) together with Akonadi5 for some months now. The problem only arose with that recent update from the Kde repo. I've usually fixed it with a reboot and then not opening kontact for a while and as I'm not sure what's gone wrong and I haven't reported it as a bug (I wouldn't be able say any more than it's not working sometimes)
As I say it seems to be ok now so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I also undeerstand your point, wolfi, about using the non-standard repos, although they are usually stable.