Hi there,
a couple of days ago I have decided to switch from the big companies OS starting with ‘W’ to OpenSUSE. I am having a great time so far, if it wasnt for the problems I am having with my emails.
What happened:
I setup KMail using my IMAP account and activating server side subscriptions. I seemed to work alright and I didnt have any issues until, apparently all over sudden, my Inbox was empty. And not only on my Computer, but also on the server, my phone, everywhere. I overcame the shock when I found all mail in the /var/mail folder, using the mail command in the Konsole.
PS: it only affects the Inbox. All other folders sync perfectly fine.
What I did:
My initial reflex was to clean up everything, that I have entered regarding my mail and giving it a clean restart. I followed the steps from https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/pim/kmail2/clean-start-after-a-failed-migration.html, the KDEs tutorial on a clean start after a failed migration. Did that, setup Kmail again, still leading to the same result. Any mail that is my Inbox only survives a few minutes until it disappears.
I repeated it a couple of times with the same outcome.
Lastly I decided to let it go, switch to Thunderbird and maybe get back to KMail once I have some more time on my hands and also more experience with this OS.
I installed Thunderbird, set it up and imported my recovered inbox and all was good. Until a few minutes later, my Inbox was empty again. Also, any Email I have received since then has magically disappeared into the var/mail folder after a few minutes.
I figured it may have something to do with Akonadi and stopped it using ‘aconadictl -stop’ - no change in behavior.
What I want to achieve:
There is two options: Either I get KMail to run fine, which at the moment seems a bit out of reach and probably nearly impossible to achieve with the information I have provided.
So the second option just getting Kmail/Aconadi or whatever is messing with my mail to stop and working in peace with Thunderbird seams more feasible from my beginners perspective. I guess there still is my information on my mail account saved somewhere in the depths of the computer, which would have to be removed.
Any advice will be highly appreciated and I will try to help you out with any further information you might need as best I can. Thank you so much!
Thunderbird does not use Akonadi. So it should not be a problem there. Since you use IMAP rather then POP maybe it has to do with your selected settings.
Well and this is what left me so confused and desperate. There must be something up with Akonadi still running in the Background retrieving mails from IMAP and, for whatever messed up setting I unintentionally produced, removing them from IMAP and pasting them to the local storage (or where ever the “mail” command gets its messages from - I know, Akonadi doesn’t actually save them somewhere and serves only as an interface tool).
This afternoon I once again went to the tutorial for a failed migration and did the following:
1.) I quit KMail/Kontact/KOrganizer and stopped Akonadi via ‘akonadictl stop’
2.) I Deleted the following folders
~/.local/share/akonadi
~/.config/akonadi
and also all files starting with akonadi from ~/.kde4/share/config
I did not restart Anokadi nor, as far as I know, use an App that runs using Anokadi. But still there is no improvement to this. I have created following scenario this afternoon after the reset:
I disconnected my computer from the internet.
I have copied a message from another folder into my Inbox using Thunderbird.
Message was in my Inbox, everything was fine for at least an hour.
I connected to my WIFI.
Within 10 minutes the message disappeared from my Inbox but reappeared in the system’s Inbox, accessed through the ‘mail’-command (How is this Inbox even called? I would like to learn and be able to express myself more clearly…).
So, any ideas how to stop this from happening? And once again, I’m extremely grateful for all the help I get! And please, if there is any information I can provide you with that would get me any closer to a solution, I will be more than glad to give it you. Only that I just don’t know what might be relevant or not yet. Thank you so much!
To narrow the options down I have removed my Email Account from Thunderbird. I also deactivated my WIFI.
On my phone, I copied a message from another folder into the Inbox. I went to my Email provider’s webpage and - Email is in the Inbox. Email is not in the root-inbox.
I activated the WIFI connection of my Laptop.
After 4 minutes the Message disappeared from my IMAP server and now appeared in the root-inbox.
The inbox versus root-inbox?
Since this happens in both Thunderbird and Kmail/akonadi, this cannot be an akonadi issue, as already said. And to me it’s miracle that a desktop user program would write in /var/mail, in all the years I’ve never seen this before.
Do you let the mail programs discover the mail settings from the server automatically?
And yes, I did the programs discover the settings automatically.
Now, in the last part neither KMail nor Thunderbird had any information of my email account but still messages ended up in the root mailbox. And I believe you, that Akonadi is not the issue here. This leads to the following two questions:
1.) which program writes messages in the root mailbox? As to say, which program accesses my IMAP server and drops the mail in the root-mailbox?
2.) How can I stop this program?
I guess this is all, I would like to achieve. Thanks again!
Hey,
I’m making progress and think I found what was wrong all along. During setup of the computer I must have, at some point, not really knowing what I was doing, entered my Email Account information to the YAST Mail Server. Is that a possible explanation for what was going on?
If so, how do I delete my information from there properly? So far, I have only opened the Yast configuration tool and deleted my information from there, but is there maybe a way to reset the Mail Server or how can I make sure that it is clean again?
I have, throughout the morning, received a message in my root-inbox, that fetchmail was unable to access my IMAP server because of missing authorization. I guess this makes sense, since I have also removed my password from the Mail server client? However it said that it will still be trying to access my IMAP server and still had the server address to my IMAP server right. How can I clean this properly?
Thanks again for your support! Great feeling, when the puzzle is slowly beginning to make sense!
Huh? Why do you need to have a Mail Server?
From what you’ve written so far, you seem to be “Client only” …
Which Mail Server did you install?
Postfix?
BSD Sendmail?
Why on earth do you believe that, the user “root” should be doing anything with respect to the system’s e-Mail transmission?
Yes, the “system” occasionally needs to send e-Mails to Administrators and, the user “root” is the default recipient of such e-Mails but, it’s normal practice to define another (administrator) user as being the recipient of system e-Mails …
Per default on openSUSE Leap 15.0, there’s a systemd service which deals with the e-Mail Server:
Stop and then, disable, this systemd service to get rid of the E-Mail Server – assuming that, you do not really need an e-Mail Server.
Then, from a CLI (Bash Shell): “apropos postfix” – “man postconf” is possibly a good starting point – inspect the files located in “/etc/postfix/” …
KMail and Postfix (or BSD Sendmail) are totally unrelated:
KMail, and the KDE Kontact PIM Suite, are Client software applications which access Servers …
If you absolutely need to setup a PIM system for a business scenario then, please inspect the Kolab suite and learn how the KDE Kontact PIM Client suite integrates into the Services offered by a Server running the Kolab suite …
BTW, the KDE Kontact PIM Suite stores it’s configuration files in the directory tree beginning at “~/.config/” and, the run-time files are located in directory trees beginning at the following “~/.local/share/” directories:
Hey dcurtisfra,
this is exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you so much! As you have assumed right, I don’t need the server at all. And as I have pointed out, I didnt really know what I was doing when I set it up. In the end, all I needed was to stop the E-Mail server.
Once again, thank you so much to all of you who have helped me with this and I guess with this, the thread can be closed now
and think I found what was wrong all along. During setup of the computer I must have, at some point, not really knowing what I was doing, entered my Email Account information to the YAST Mail Server. Is that a possible explanation for what was going on?