Version: 1.7.2 (using KDE KDE 3.3.2) Installed from: SuSE RPMs OS: Linux After starting kmail, the following error is seen: KMail could not create folder '$HOME/Mail'; please make sure that you can view and modify the content of the folder '/home/rbos'. Well $HOME is set to /home/rbos and the latter can written to! My home directory is nfs mounted and I run kmail from different systems. These systems have different kde versions installed. The problem seem to be caused by this. The error is reported by kmail-1.7.2 on the other system with kmail-1.8 I can just start kmail as expected. The error should not be 'KMail could not create folder '$HOME/Mail'; but should tell the user that kmail configuration file is for a newer kmail version (1.8) and as such kmail (1.7.2) can not be started anylonger...., please upgrade.
As a side note: because kmail cannot be started => or just rejects to start kontact does not start too. Ain't it possible to have kontact mark kmail is being inactive and continue?
Between KDDE 3.3 and 3.4 the config reading changed and allowed since then to have $HOME in the config. As this is not allowed in older version, you must make sure to define an absolute path in the config when you want to mix versions.