Also note that firefox nor opensync does not work as they try to make pipes into home dir too.

I saw this today on some afs-homed workstations. Firefox DOES work on these workstations however...

a /tmp/kde-username location as an option would be much appreciated.

i had problem with AFS too,so i did

mkdir -p /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi
ln -s /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi/ $HOME/.local/share/

and it worked. But i don't like this solution.

i did it also because i had timeout error when i started clean KDE4 (i cleaned my $HOME/.kde4)

so my solution was to put 

mkdir -p /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi
ln -s /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi/ $HOME/.local/share/

in to /etc/kde/startup/agent-startup.sh

(I use gentoo linux)

i had problem with AFS too,so i did

mkdir -p /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi
ln -s /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi/ $HOME/.local/share/

and it worked. But i don't like this solution.

i did it also because i had timeout error when i started clean KDE4 (i cleaned my $HOME/.kde4)

so my solution was to put 

mkdir -p /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi
ln -s /tmp/kde-$USER/akonadi/ $HOME/.local/share/

in to /etc/kde/startup/agent-startup.sh

(I use gentoo linux)

Hej,

in the current version of Akonadi server you can specify a custom socket path
by entering

[Connection]
SocketDirectory=/tmp/akonadi-myuser/

into $HOME/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

Could it be set up somehow to be globally configured? I would imagine most deployments of AFS apply to all users (for instance, MIT's Athena system). We would certainly prefer a solution which did not involve customizing a configuration file separately per-user.

What if the string was a template and accepted $USER somewhere? Or perhaps the underlying code could automatically fallback to /tmp/akonadi-$USER when creating the local socket fails.

Can a solution similar to kde's
~/.kde/socket-<hostname> => /tmp/ksocket-<username>
symlink be used in akonadi too?

Same bug as bug 182292 I suppose?

My suggestion on how to fix it is there:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182292#c6

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Yes the lnusertemp solution (make symlink if possible, otherwise mkdir) as used by $KDEHOME/ksocket-$HOSTNAME would be better than a configurable path. No configuration needed, it would just work out of the box for all users.

Reopening this one, which IMHO makes 203460 unnecessary.

*** Bug 250107 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

commit e4affdfc2922efc10b647939fd4e068c02e256eb
branch master
Author: Tobias Koenig <tokoe@kde.org>
Date:   Mon Dec 6 19:56:07 2010 +0100

    Use symlink to /tmp as socket directory by default
    
    This patch is based on the one written by Ansgar Burchardt to use
    a socket directory linked to /tmp/<username>-akonadi.<random> instead
    of the hard-coded one from ~/.local/share/akonadi.
    With this patch Akonadi will start on systems with $HOME on AFS without
    any further configuration needed.
    
    BUG: 179006

diff --git a/server/src/utils.cpp b/server/src/utils.cpp
index 37949db..4575292 100644
--- a/server/src/utils.cpp
+++ b/server/src/utils.cpp
@@ -22,9 +22,21 @@
 
 #include "libs/xdgbasedirs_p.h"
 
+#include <QtCore/QDebug>
 #include <QtCore/QDir>
 #include <QtCore/QFileInfo>
 #include <QtCore/QSettings>
+#include <QtNetwork/QHostInfo>
+
+#include <cerrno>
+#include <cstdlib>
+#include <pwd.h>
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+
+static QString akonadiSocketDirectory();
+static bool checkSocketDirectory( const QString &path );
+static bool createSocketDirectory( const QString &link, const QString &tmpl );
 
 using namespace Akonadi;
 
@@ -33,7 +45,16 @@ QString Utils::preferredSocketDirectory( const QString &defaultDirectory )
   const QString serverConfigFile = XdgBaseDirs::akonadiServerConfigFile( XdgBaseDirs::ReadWrite );
   const QSettings serverSettings( serverConfigFile, QSettings::IniFormat );
 
-  QString socketDir = serverSettings.value( QLatin1String( "Connection/SocketDirectory" ), defaultDirectory ).toString();
+  QString socketDir = defaultDirectory;
+  if ( !serverSettings.contains( QLatin1String( "Connection/SocketDirectory" ) ) ) {
+    // if no socket directory is defined, use the symlinked from /tmp
+    socketDir = akonadiSocketDirectory();
+
+    if ( socketDir.isEmpty() ) // if that does not work, fall back on default
+      socketDir = defaultDirectory;
+  } else {
+    socketDir = serverSettings.value( QLatin1String( "Connection/SocketDirectory" ), defaultDirectory ).toString();
+  }
 
   const QString userName = QString::fromLocal8Bit( qgetenv( "USER" ) );
   if ( socketDir.contains( QLatin1String( "$USER" ) ) && !userName.isEmpty() )
@@ -50,3 +71,74 @@ QString Utils::preferredSocketDirectory( const QString &defaultDirectory )
 
   return socketDir;
 }
+
+QString akonadiSocketDirectory()
+{
+  const QString hostname = QHostInfo::localHostName();
+
+  if ( hostname.isEmpty() ) {
+    qCritical() << "QHostInfo::localHostName() failed";
+    return QString();
+  }
+
+  const uid_t uid = getuid();
+  const struct passwd *pw_ent = getpwuid( uid );
+  if ( !pw_ent ) {
+    qCritical() << "Could not get passwd entry for user id" << uid;
+    return QString();
+  }
+
+  const QString link = XdgBaseDirs::saveDir( "data", QLatin1String( "akonadi" ) ) + QLatin1Char( '/' ) + QLatin1String( "socket-" ) + hostname;
+  const QString tmpl = QLatin1String( "akonadi-" ) + QLatin1String( pw_ent->pw_name ) + QLatin1String( ".XXXXXX" );
+
+  if ( checkSocketDirectory( link ) )
+    return link;
+
+  if ( createSocketDirectory( link, tmpl ) )
+    return link;
+
+  qCritical() << "Could not create socket directory for Akonadi.";
+  return QString();
+}
+
+static bool checkSocketDirectory( const QString &path )
+{
+  QFileInfo info( path );
+
+  if ( !info.exists() )
+    return false;
+
+  if ( info.isSymLink() )
+    info = QFileInfo( info.symLinkTarget() );
+
+  if ( !info.isDir() )
+    return false;
+
+  if ( info.ownerId() != getuid() )
+    return false;
+
+  return true;
+}
+
+static bool createSocketDirectory( const QString &link, const QString &tmpl )
+{
+  QString directory = QString::fromLatin1( "%1%2%3" ).arg( QDir::tempPath() ).arg( QDir::separator() ).arg( tmpl );
+
+  QByteArray directoryString = directory.toLocal8Bit().data();
+
+  if ( !mkdtemp( directoryString.data() ) ) {
+    qCritical() << "Creating socket directory with template" << directoryString << "failed:" << strerror( errno );
+    return false;
+  }
+
+  directory = QString::fromLocal8Bit( directoryString );
+
+  QFile::remove( link );
+
+  if ( !QFile::link( directory, link ) ) {
+    qCritical() << "Creating symlink from" << directory << "to" << link << "failed";
+    return false;
+  }
+
+  return true;
+}

This change in git will cause trouble with old akonadi config files where the socket has been set to $HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socket, akonadi will crash with the error message like:

Last driver error: "QMYSQL: Unable to connect"
Last database error: "Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/home/luran/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socket' (2)"
Unable to open database "Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/home/luran/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socket' (2) QMYSQL: Unable to connect"

And multiple mysqld will be started. There should be some announcement beside the commit log, or some code to fix the path automatically.

(In reply to comment #13)
> This change in git will cause trouble with old akonadi config files where the
> socket has been set to $HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socket,
> akonadi will crash with the error message like:
This has been fixed in the meantime.