kmail no longer stores my email in local folders. This started after kmail crashed and corrupted my folder structure. After repairing my folders and re-importing my email in kmail, i find that kmail will no longer store my email in maildir format, and further will not export my emails in any format I'm familiar with or use. Is it possible for kmail to store my emails in maildir format? if not, can I export it to maildir format? simply put, I've already had kmail corrupt my entire email store twice and I don't trust the new backend that stores everything in one file, permitting no chance recovery if a single byte is corrupted. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. unable to get kmail to store my email in maildir format, period!! 2. 3. My concern is that I have no UNBREAKABLE way of storing my current email store which contains more than 10,000 emails. I've used kmail and the maildir format for at least six or seven years and the maildir format has saved my email store against any number of problems that could have destroyed it. I need a TRUSTWORTHY way of backing up my email store.
an additional mystery: it seems that any folder I create now, is stored on disk at the local-mail directory (specified by the properties on the Local Folders account). any content copied from my originally imported folders which are not stored on disk to a newly created folder, is put on disk. so I have found a workaround. So the real problem may be that the kmailcvt doesn't import content so that it is stored in the local-mail folder. My inbox folder is still not archived to disk but I can remove my content from the inbox to another folder without too much trouble. It seems to me that we should have control over the option to store our email in maildir format, if not for the live store then perhaps an export utility?
I am not sure whether this is the same problem but I guess so. I use ARCH and have also 4.10.5 KDE: WHen I create a new folder in kmail this folder shows in kamil and i can work with it (move, copy mail delete and so forth). But when I look under .local/share/local-mail there are some folders but not all (especially the new ones are missing though they work in kmail!) ... I created a folder "testing" and made sure that akonadi uses .local/share/local-mail for local folders: - the folder "testing" doesn't show up under .local/share/local-mail ( - the folder "testing" (and none of it's contents!) does NOT show up in .local/share/.local-mail.directory which should be the correct place to my understanding - when i do a systemwide "locate" or "find" I can't find the folder "testing" (or it's content!) anywhere! ??? - everything is in place in Kmail - which I don't trust if I can't find the actual files somewhere ... Is this a bug? if yes it is a huge one. and a big regression .... if no than how are mails saved (or atre they only present in the database? - should only store metadata afaik ... ) sry I am lost here, plz help someone or clarify, thx for reading, piedro
How odd: in comment#2, pedro is unable to find a newly created folder or it's content, but on my machine, it is the default folders which cannot be found on disk. I have created a filter COPIES any new emails to a folder I created and then actually deletes the original. This was the only way I could force kmail to put new emails on disk. I had to copy all of my OLD content to newly created folders in order to force kmail to store my email archive on disk so I can back it up in a format I understand and can manipulate to my satisfaction. Note to core developers: I'm guessing your intent was to migrate kmail's storage scheme from the traditional Maildir format to the new nepomuk/akonadi database format. in my humble opinion, this is a step in the wrong direction for more than one reason: 1) corruption of a single bit in the database file would destroy the entire email store. 2) the new format is not compatible with anything else, and as far as I have been able to discover has no tools with which I can create ANY backup whatsoever of the email archive. If i can't store my emails on disk (maildir) and cannot backup my archive with a cron script and I cannot even export my archive to a format usable by other email programs..............? I'm terrified that my next kmail issue will be the end of my email archive which, believe it or not, contains over seven years of email.
I also start seriously fearing that kmail becomes destructive and I start loosing mail again (like it it happened before two years ago). At the moment (though as I stated before I completely deleted and reconfigured the akonadi agent "local folders" the problems seem to multiply: - now another folder "testing2" which I created within kmail created and shows up under ".local-mail.directory" - this is the only folder showing up here and to my surprise there are no mails in this folder though there are in the folder "testing2" in kmail (no furthter hidden folders to be found on the harddrive location ...) - the trash folder isn't found anymore by my mail accounts. why? Now reconfiguring is easy though annoying for 10+ email accounts - in the dialog to choose the trash folder every standard local folder shows up twice! (double checked akonadi console: only ONE "local folders" agent seems to be present ... ??? - after reassigning a trash folder (one of the two) i can delete trash again and it shows up in my trash folder ... but now when trying to move mail from the trah fodler to another folder I get the "no valid collection" found error ... after a while this error just went away but neither the trash folder nor the trash mails show up anywhere on my harddrive - which is really unaccptable as Fred pointed out before ... - also the settings dialog for identity now states that no valid "templates" folder can be found. Funny thing is: this seems to be the same dropdown list for choosing the correct folder like the one when choosing a trash folder ... BUT here I don't get double entries for loacl folders .... to summarize: it's completely messed up and I don't know how to access my archived email (in a local folders backup) again, reimporting, again, seems no valid option as the results are unpredictable ... just throwing them in the correct folers to let akonadi agents reindex them can't be done because the respective folders aren't found anywhere .... the disappointing part is, that I was just hoping kmail finally was getting there and I started to use it - now I shouldn't have .... just like Fred I have many archived mails (20 000+) for reference with longterm projects I am involved with and I need to access them ... So plz can someone comment on whats going on, will this be fixed, has the maildir format really changed as Fred suspected (read above) is there a workaound ? thx, piedro
plz would someone comment on this: I still have folders and mail in "local folders" in kmail that don't show up in .local/share/local-mail nor in .local/share/.local-mail.directory ... so, plz: Where is my mail located in my filesystem? p.
btw, how can this not be critical? p.
I found the following misbehaviour. Though I can't confirm this fixes the problem I am confident it has a lot to do with it. If in the file ~/.kde4/share/config/akonadi_maildir_resource_15rc there is the entry TopLevelIsContainer=true things seem to work (somehow though there are still double entries in the kmail config dialogs choosing folders for trash for example). As I understand this entry should be standard now and it unclutters the recurring subfolder structure in .local-mail.directory (which is a good thing I think) For reason beyond my grasp the "TopLevelIsContainer=true" entry gets removed from the "akonadi_maildir_resource_15rc" file by the akonadi GUI tools to configure agents. So if I open akonadi configuration and press "change" on the local folder agent (just to see how it is configured), confirm it points to the right maildir (".local/share/local-mail") and then close the dialog the entry "TopLevelIsContainer=true" is removed from the "akonadi_maildir_resource_15rc" file? This is a big problem because basically it means you can't use akonadi console or akonadi configuration to do stuff. How can this be fixed (there must be a default settings file somewhere that theses dialogs use, right?) ... ? please devs, would someone start commenting on this problem? thx, piedro
please someone move this bug from "general" to "akonadi" or where else it belongs, it seems here nobody is watching ... thx, p.
I am using now KDE 4.14.2 and this behaviour of auto removing "TopLevelIsContainer=true" from the mail-resource configuration file is still there ... plz would someone comment or move this thread - it is a serious problem if the tools that are mentioned in every single help article or documentation overwrite the default behaviour... p.
Piedro, I don´t completely get the issue at hand here after reading through the bug and the comments. Since you write that this still happens with KMail from KDE 4.14.2, can you please summarize in a short and precise way what the issue is and *how* to reproduce it? Thank you, Martin I do have: martin@merkaba:~/.kde/share/config> cat ./akonadi_maildir_resource_0rc [General] Path[$e]=$HOME/.local/share/local-mail TopLevelIsContainer=true KMail stores mails in there just fine and minus write caching I do not miss anything in there. I also experience no mail loss whatsoever as far as I am aware of. I try to get this reassigned to the right component in case I get granted the bugzilla fu to do that or I ask someone who has. But first I need to understand whats going on.
Of course that also goes to you, Fred, as the original reporter of the bug. Please provide a concise explaination of the issue you are seeing, preferably with a way on how to reproduce it. Thank you, Martin
Setting to waiting for information after I received bugzilla rights to do that.
Dear Bug Submitter, This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with no change in 30 days, the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information. For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging If you have already provided the requested information, please set the bug status as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is ready to be confirmed. Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!
Sry I missed Martins comments completely, at his time I moved away from KDE as there way too much fixing involved which interfered with my work. I cannot comment on that any further, I remember that akonadi created mail folders in .local/share even if I defined the folders elsewhere and that after crashs or forced shutdowns of akonadi, it would start using the .local/share folders instead of the custom preset... Sry thats all I have. I am not using KDE anymore.
Thanks for the update!