Re: [kde] All KNotes gone

[Alex Schuster]

Finally! The notes are back.

I wrote:

> Some while ago already, KDE killed all my knotes. I think it was when
> 4.13.0 came out, and some migrator tried to migrate the existing notes.
> Well, it failed here. Now, I really want to have them back.

I finally fixed this. The reason was that my KDE was built inconsistently.

I'm a Gentoo user, so all is built from source. Due to lack of time I did
not update my system properly in a while, and did not notice that not all
of KDE's packages were up to date. I was missing the kdepim USE flag,
which probably had been automatically enabled before. Without it, all
stuff related to this was not updated since April. The rest was, but did
not care about the old versions of KDEPIM stuff I had installed.

My main fault was not to run emerge --depclean, which would have removed
obsolete packages like knotes, so I would have noticed. Still, it's
somewhat weird that the migrator did not check whether the application is
up to date, but well, I guess that's one of the things I need to care
about myself.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] All KNotes gone

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan wrote:

> Alex Schuster posted on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 01:17:12 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
> > Some while ago already, KDE killed all my knotes. I think it was when
> > 4.13.0 came out, and some migrator tried to migrate the existing
> > notes. Well, it failed here. Now, I really want to have them back.
[...]
> > BTW: About every time I experience some trouble with KDE, I make a
> > note about this using knotes. And this happens a lot. So it was only
> > a matter of time until I ran into a problem with KDE which made it
> > impossible to log this notes any more in this way, because my logging
> > utility itself was broken.
> 
> FWIW, I decided some time ago (early 4.7 era, when kmail ate one too
> many emails and I asked myself /why/ I was putting up with it, email
> is /not/ rocket science any more, it's decades old technology
> that /should/ "just work) that akonadi was bad news, and got as far
> away from it as possible, switching anything kdepim related to other
> alternatives (claws-mail for mail and feeds, that's about all the
> kdepim I used).

I also dropped KMail. I had way too many different issues, and it once
deleted a lot of e-mails. I'm also using Claws now, but I miss KMail.
Claws does not multi-task so well, it's not responsible when it fetches
mails. I have several e-mail accounts, one with > 100 sub-folders, so
checking takes a while. Thunderbird does this better. And also KMail. All
this Akonadi stuff still sounds like a good idea. But not if it breaks
things so often. For me it was a lot of trouble. And now I have neither
my addresses nor my notes. Oh, my calendar is also gone. And the To Dos.
Wow, except for KNode (sucks, too) and Akregator (has bugs, too, unusable
for me) nothing in Kontact works any more. And I really likes Kontact
once.

> I'm convinced that was the right decision. =:^)

I'm not sure. If it would work again, I'd like it. KNotes is nice.

> As for notes, I'm of the rather strong opinion that the stablest and
> most reliable solution is a simple plain-text-file-based system,
> organized into a subdir hierarchy if you have a bunch of them, possibly
> with symlinks from other subdirs for multi-categories and tagging if
> desired, backed up periodically as value-appropriate.  That's
> unaffected by whatever text editor aka notes-client you happen to be
> using ATM and readable by all sorts of stuff including browsers,
> cat/less/more/most, and given a not too complex block device and
> filesystem stack, even straight from grub2 without booting further,
> should it be necessary.  And when you can't get into X or even mc,
> grep's a great basic search and easily scriptable. =:^)  Higher
> availability and cross-client compatibility than that is tough to get
> in the computer world! =:^)

Well, yes. But I like have them open on my desktop easily, and I use rich
text formatting. Did not think that this is too complicated already.
Of course, I also had trouble in the past with KNotes, like display
corruption, things only showing up when highlighting, and content
bouncing up and down when entering and leaving the window with the mouse.

> In terms of cleaning up the current mess, starting with a clean ~/.kde4 
> may indeed help, but do keep in mind that the kde5 upgrade is just
> around the corner, probably later this year or sometime next, depending
> on how early you want to try it[1], and you'll probably be doing
> something similar for it, too.

Ouch. I am worried about that, and want to avoid it as long as I can.
Well, I would try it though. But the switch to KDE4 taught me a lesson.
I'm repeating myself, but to me it still looks like beta, with small
glitches everywhere. Or bigger ones, like in $SUBJECT.

BTW, I tried with a clean .kde4 directory. I just cannot import the
KNotes. And I also get errors in the Akonadi log, about database tables
not being available. Guess I'll head over to the kde-pim list.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] All KNotes gone

[Alex Schuster]

O.Sinclair writes:

> On Saturday 26 July 2014 1:17:12 AM Alex Schuster wrote:
>> Hi there!
>> 
>> Some while ago already, KDE killed all my knotes. I think it was
>> when 4.13.0 came out, and some migrator tried to migrate the
>> existing notes. Well, it failed here. Now, I really want to have
>> them back.
>> 
>> I'm at 4.13.3. now. I deleted all notes in the Akonadi settings,
>> and created a new Notes resource, pointing to 
>> ~/.kde4/share/apps/knotes/notes.ics, which I verified to have all
>> my former notes in it. Nothing happens (I also restarted knotes),
>> knotes shows no notes at all.
>> 
> I shortened your mail a bit as I don't think our sql problems are
> related to the lost notes problem.
> 
> I also lost my notes on upgrade to 4.13, in other words when Baloo
> replaced Nepomuk.

Oh, Baloo. I had other issues with that, it ran for days, and so I just
tried to stop it by telling it to not index ANY folders. Even this took
many hours (some days, but my PC is not always running any more).

> I did manage to "find" them again and hopefully this thread on
> kdeforums can give you some pointers: 
> https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=120712

Thanks. But isn't this just what I already tried - creating a new KNotes
resource and pointing it to the existing KNotes file? This just does
nothing.

Wonko
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[kde] All KNotes gone

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

Some while ago already, KDE killed all my knotes. I think it was when
4.13.0 came out, and some migrator tried to migrate the existing notes.
Well, it failed here. Now, I really want to have them back.

I'm at 4.13.3. now. I deleted all notes in the Akonadi settings, and
created a new Notes resource, pointing to
~/.kde4/share/apps/knotes/notes.ics, which I verified to have all my
former notes in it. Nothing happens (I also restarted knotes), knotes
shows no notes at all. 

Possibly related: Before the upgrade, I was using QSQLITE as driver in
akonadiserverrc. This seems to be deprecated now, so I switched this to
QMYSQL, using the akoadi setup tool again. Akoadi starts without
complaining, but when I do the test, I get some errors:

MySQL server protocol (~/,local/share/akonadi/db_data/mysql.err):
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.8
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: Using Linux native AIO
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 80.0M
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
140722 21:35:30 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda.
140722 21:35:30  InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start
140722 21:35:31 Percona XtraDB (http://www.percona.com)
5.5.37-MariaDB-35.0 started; log sequence number 2173016
140722 21:35:31 [Warning] Can't open and lock time zone table: Table
'mysql.time_zone_leap_second' doesn't exist trying to live without them
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table
'mysql.servers' doesn't exist
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_current' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_history' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_history_long' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'setup_consumers' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'setup_instruments' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table 'performance_schema'.'setup_timers'
has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'performance_timers' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table 'performance_schema'.'threads' has
the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_summary_by_thread_by_event_name' has
the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_summary_by_instance' has the wrong
structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'events_waits_summary_global_by_event_name' has the
wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'file_summary_by_event_name' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'file_summary_by_instance' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'mutex_instances' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'rwlock_instances' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'cond_instances' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [ERROR] Native table
'performance_schema'.'file_instances' has the wrong structure
140722 21:35:31 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.5.38-MariaDB'  socket:
'/tmp/akonadi-wonko.xK7u0d/mysql.socket'  port: 0  Source distribution

I found something about this [1], but in German only. So I tried the
proposed solution and removed all my resources,
deleted .local/share/akonadi, started Akonadi, and tried
those mysql commands:

wonko@weird ~ $ /usr/share/mysql/scripts/mysql_install_db
--datadir=$HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/

FATAL ERROR: Could not find ./bin/my_print_defaults

If you compiled from source, you need to run 'make install' to
copy the software into the correct location ready for operation.

If you are using a binary release, you must either be at the top
level of the extracted archive, or pass the --basedir option
pointing to that location.

The latest information about mysql_install_db is available at
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/installing-system-tables-mysql_install_db

In order to make my_print_defautlts work, I symlinked this into my local
~/bin directory. Now I get an error that I am not allowed to chown a
directory:

wonko@weird ~ $ mysql_install_db
--datadir=$HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/ chown: changing ownership
of '/home/wonko/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/': Operation not permitted
Cannot change ownership of the database directories to the 'mysql' user.
Check that you have the necessary permissions and try again.

I tried the next command anyway:

 wonko@weird ~ $ mysql_upgrade
--socket=$HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_misc/mysql.socke

Re: [kde] KDE 4.11.2 intermittently forgets plasmoids (2013-10-06)

[Alex Schuster]

Steven P. Ulrick writes:

> Hello, Everyone
> Lately after I logout of KDE and then log back in, my desktop
> background is sometimes changed to something that I did NOT have as my
> background, and all of my Plasmoids are gone...

This happens a lot to me, for several years now. So, whenever I make any
modifications to plasma, I backup the plasma-desktop-appletsrc file
first. And hope that on the next login my changes will still be there.
There's a good chance they aren't, and also when upgrading KDE, plasma
gets messed up often.

Alex
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Re: [kde] OT: Thunderbird Folder refresh needed

[Alex Schuster]

Martin (KDE) wrote:

This response is somewhat late. Since I have a new job, time is short, and
I do not use my desktop PC much any more.

> Am 21.10.2012 18:35, schrieb Alex Schuster:
> > Klaus Vink Slott writes:
>
> > Check the account's settings -> Synchronization & Storage. The
> > default is to have 'Keep messages for this account on this computer'
> > enabled, this makes Thunderbird download them all.
> >
> >>> You have to
> >>> enable the check for every folder you want to watch (in preference
> >>> dialogue of the folder). At least I use it all the time (since I
> >>> moved from kmail to t-bird).
> >
> > Or right-click on any folder and select 'Subscribe...' to quickly
> > subscribe to all the folders you want.
>
> This was not a problem of subscription but a problem of cyclic update
> the folder content.

Ah, so there is a difference. I thought subscribed folders would be
checked regularly N minutes, according to the Account Settings -> Server
Settings. But you are right, now I realize I had the same problem.

Thunderbird @ linux @ home seems to not have this option checked on any 
folders, yet still they are scanned for new messages regularly. It just
works. Thunderbird @ Windows @ work also has it unchecked, but does not
scan folders. There I have to enable it manually, which sort of sucks,
with > 100 folders.

And another thing I do not like about Thunderbird is that the threaded 
display can only be set for one folder at at time, instead of enabling 
it for all folders at once, which I would like.


> >> That was quite some work, I have many filters and folders. But now I
> >> have it working. (Had to leave Kmail again: After a week it stopped
> >> showing the message content in some folders. The message preview just
> >> stay blank - even after a logout/login)
> >
> > KMail is weird :(

As I wrote I did not use my desktop PC for a while. Now I updated to KDE
4.9.4, and I looked into Kontact again - mainly because I received an
encrypted e-mail, and I did not set up this yet for Claws or Thunderbird.

Was I able to read this e-mail? Of course not. It's worse than ever.
KMail does not display a single e-mail any more. It shows which folders
have unread mails, and some have a spinning wheel indicating something is
being done, but that's all. So I removed the IMAP resource of that
account and restarted, but still KMail shows the account, but as offline.
Again, I see no content. Things like opening the Kontact settings or
switching to the calendar take one minute of time until something
happens. 

Then I suddenly had the same widgets on all desktops (I have six
desktops, with different widgets), so I restarted KDE, KMail now does not
show ANY accounts, that is, the other two accounts and the  local folders
are also gone (the Akonadi resources are still there). 
I also no longer have any address book. The resource is there, and the
path /home/wonko/.local/share/contacts/ still has lots of vcards. So I
guess nothing is lost, but I'd really like to have access to the
contacts. I removed the addressbook resource, and added a vcarddir one,
but that does not help.


> In the old kmail1 days I had to recreate the index files every now and
> then (about every 2 years) but I never lost mails. After doing similar
> stuff to kmail2 (deleting the akonadi DB) I lost hundreds of mails (this
> is fixed in the meantime afaik) but the good feeling is lost. I don't
> know if I can still trust kmail2 and the mail handling.

I lost thousands when I moved an IMAP folder into another folder on the
same server. Nothing important, so no harm done here. But the guy who
reported this lost 54,000: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290363

> For me it will take another two versions to trust kmail2 for mail
> handling.

At least when doing stuff like moving mails around. This is scary.

Wonko
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[kde] Automated import of camera photos

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

As some of you may know, I'm a Gentoo user, and I have a KDE which is 
quite well configured. But I'm setting up a PC for a lady who has _very_ 
limited PC experience. She wants to try Linux, because she became 
deprived of e-mail access by her ISP after her account started to send 
SPAM due to some Windows malware. She only uses Firefox (mainly for 
eBay), a mail client for two mail accounts, an image viewer, and she 
needs to import photos from her camera. She also likes to play two 
Windows games, Space Cadet (pinball) and some cards game.


So I installed openSUSE (12.2 I think) on her new PC. For the desktop 
environment, I chose KDE because it is so configurable. There should be 
extra large icons on the desktop for example. I can set the fonts to a 
huge size, which works fine mostly - notifications however show up with 
text lines merged into another, so the text is not readable. This 
happens when I plug in an USB camera, KDE asks if I want to open it with 
Dolphin, or if I want to import pictures with Gwenview or Digikam. Maybe 
I can tune this so only one entry appears.


Photo import is the main problem: She currently has some Windows 
application which allows to import all new images of the camera to a 
folder. I would really REALLY like to have this feature, but it does not 
seem to be possible.


When the camera is plugged in, I can choose to import images with 
Digikam. Works, with a few clicks. But when I do this again, Digikam 
wants to import all images again, not only the new ones. It is working 
fine as long as I do not close Digikam, but when I open it again, it 
will import all images. This make es it basically unusable.
I'm not sure if this also happened when I have Digikam running and 
import manually, but this involves more clicks, and is also not what I want.


Gwenview imports only the new images. Fine, but also with way to many 
clicks. The user needs to open folders named 'DCIM' and such, has to 
pick the right ones, and the dialog asks him to import 'documents', not 
'pictures' or 'photos'. You might think tis is not a big deal, but I 
fear this will make the user keep using the old Windows PC, where 
everything works as expected.


Any ideas how I could solve this? Is there any possibility to import all 
new images from a camera to a folder? I would not mind scripting if 
necessary.


Sorry, I do not know the exact version of KDE, and I do not have the PC 
here right now. Maybe this is a bug which is already fixed. I do not 
have access to my own PC right now, too, so I cannot simply check this. 
So I'm sorry for asking here, but I'm moving, and only have a Windows 
laptop with me at the moment.


Another disappointment was KMail, which I gave another try. The problem 
was that I did not know the passwords yet, and it (or rather Akonadi) 
kept asking for it, I was not even able to delete the resource because 
of the dialog which would appear over and over again.  I guess I could 
have solved this eventually, but then I decided to simply use 
Thunderbird instead.


What was great about using KDE was the possibility to configure the 
desktop. I removed all window title bar buttons except for the close 
button - minimizing an application to the panel would already be too 
complicated, don't ask :)  A double click on the title bar to maximize 
the window is okay, other stuff is too sophisticated. If she wants to 
use another application, she simply closes the one she is using. She is 
happy with this, and then so be it.
I also disabled features like maximizing windows when they are moved to 
the screen borders, or special effects happening when the mouse enters 
the screen's corners. While I personally like those features much, it's 
great that they are all optional. Thanks for leaving KDE so much 
configurable, I guess this would not be possible with Gnome.


Wonko
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Re: [kde] OT: Thunderbird Folder refresh needed

[Alex Schuster]

Klaus Vink Slott writes:

> On 2012-10-18 08:00, Martin (KDE) answered me:
> >> Thunderbird insists on downloading all mail from the IMAP or else
> >> you cant
> >> >monitor other than inbox for new mail. As I use serverside filters
> >> >to sort incoming mail there is a risk of not noticing new mail
> > Hu, no. You can monitor all folders and use server side filtering and
> > do not download all mails to a local store with thunderbird.
> 
> What..?? ..I see that now. Has that always been there?  I remember
> searching for this feature sometime ago. Then I thought that was what
> "Subscribe" was for, but subscription made no difference.
> 
> Anyway TB still seems to do a complete download of the entire folder
> first time you connect. Might be some in MUA spam checker or whatever.

Check the account's settings -> Synchronization & Storage. The default is
to have 'Keep messages for this account on this computer' enabled, this
makes Thunderbird download them all.

> > You have to
> > enable the check for every folder you want to watch (in preference
> > dialogue of the folder). At least I use it all the time (since I moved
> > from kmail to t-bird).

Or right-click on any folder and select 'Subscribe...' to quickly
subscribe to all the folders you want.

However, on Windows, not all folders are being checked for new mail. And
I had to unsubscribe to the 'Drafts' folder, or else it would hang while
checking folders, except when forcing the check manually.

> That was quite some work, I have many filters and folders. But now I
> have it working. (Had to leave Kmail again: After a week it stopped
> showing the message content in some folders. The message preview just
> stay blank - even after a logout/login)

KMail is weird :(

Wonko
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Re: [kde] no way to add application to panel in 4.8.4 in openSUSE

[Alex Schuster]

Felix Miata writes:

> Where is this supposed to be? Right clicking panel only brings up a
> list of three: task manager settings, panel options, and remove task
> manager, and allows to add widgets via panel "options", but not
> applications.

The only way I know is to locate the application in the K menu, right
click, and there you can add it to favorites, desktop or panel. I would
have expected the possibility to drag and drop an application
directly to the panel, but that doesn't work.

Personally, I prefer the quick launcher plasmoid, because so my twelve
launchers take up not much more space than a single application would
need.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] convert to kde on Windows 7

[Alex Schuster]

Doug writes:

> I hope this message falls within the scope of the guidelines you
> published.

That's okay, but there's also a kde-windows mailing list which might be
suited better for your question:
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-windows

> I want to convert to the KDE version for Windows.  However, I want to
> be absolutely sure I can get back, if it doesn't work out. (There is a 
> program that was very difficult to install, and
> I don't want to ever have to do it again!  As well as other paid 
> programs.) In order to do that, I would like to copy the entire Windows 
> partition to an external drive. On the Windows system,
> the drive contains Win 7 plus pclos in dual-boot configuration.  Can I 
> do (from the Linux partition) dd if=sda1 of=sdb and, if that is
> correct, would the external drive be bootable?

I did not use Windows > XP much, but I doubt that very much. I'd assume
that the install drive is stored somewhere, and unless you make /dev/sdb
show up as your C: drive, this won't work. Would a whole drive even show
up as such in Windows, or wouldn't it have top be a partition
like /dev/sdb1?

I'd simply do the dd command, or better something like dd if=/dev/sda1
of=/mnt/externaldrive/windows.dump so you can use the rest of the
external drive for other things. And if you want to go back, restore that
backup.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] File association query

[Alex Schuster]

Renaud (Ron) Olgiati writes:

> Next, in Konqueror, I have right-clicked on a *.mid file, gone to Open
> With, put in the name of my script (called, imaginatively mis2mp3  ;-3)
> and selected Run in Terminal, Do Not Close... and Remember
> Association...
> 
> The script runs in a Konsole window when I click on a .mid in Konqueror
> file BUT the Konsole window close when the script exits.

This is working for me. On KDE 4.8.4 and I think also before.

> How can I get to remain open ?

Maybe it works when you do it like this, which also provides more
flexibility:

Right-click on the file -> settings -> spanner icon, then add an
application to the list at the bottom. There you put the name of your
script as before, but you do not need to enable the terminal.

When that application was added, click the edit button. Now you can
specify more detailed stuff. Go to the 'program' tab, click the 'advanced
settings' button. Here, you can specify to open in a terminal, and to let
the terminal stay open after the program ended. I'd also disable the
startup notification.

If that doesn't help, you probably need a workaround like Björn
suggested. Maybe with an option to your script, so it wouldn't also wait
when you run it directly from the terminal.

WaitKey=
while getopts "w" opt
do
case $opt in
w ) WaitKey=true ;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))

[your mis2mp3 script]

[[ $WaitKey ]] && read -n 1 -s -p "Press key to exit "

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Configure KDE Terminal Working Directory

[Alex Schuster]

Zaki Akhmad writes:

> I want to configure my KDE terminal
> 
> The default appearance of terminal with
> /home/za/Video/youtube/music/mraz working directory is like this:
> za@zara:/home/za/Video/youtube/music/mraz
> 
> If my working directory is too deep, the terminal appearance won't be
> convenience again, so I'd like to only show the last directory
> za@zara:/mraz
> 
> How to do that?

If you're a bash user, the prompt is defined by the $PS1 environment
variable, which is set somewhere in /etc/profile, /etc/bash/bashrc or in
your user's ~/.bashrc. Yours is probably set to \u@\h:\w. Change it to
\u@\h:\W to get the last directory only. See the bash man page, section
PROMPTING, for an explanation of possible values. Mine is set to
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w \$\[\033[00m\] , which gives
colored output (user@host in green, directory in blue).

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE 4.6 ---- Dolphin Crashes on a mouse over

[Alex Schuster]

John Woodhouse writes:

> I've just loaded a lot of software to handle canon raw photo files. If
> I browse a directory with any raw files in it Dolphin crashes as soon
> as I move the mouse over one.

Maybe it's this bug? https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270366


> Any ideas?

Upgrade, 4.6 is ancient. As a workaround, turning off the info panel
might help.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Could not create IMAP folders under IMAP root folder

[Alex Schuster]

Hauke Bruno Wollentin writes:

> In KMail I couldn't create new folders directly under
> "exam...@foo.bar", like:
> 
> exam...@foo.bar
> --Inbox
> --MyNewFolder
> --Sent
> --Trash
> ...
> 
> Creating of subfolders is ok, the IMAP-Server is ok too, with
> Thunderbird or my webmailer I can create folders under the root folder.
> 
> Any ideas? Maybe it's a feature ;)

I think this has just been forgotten to implement. I remember that I had
noticed this, too, but as I do not manually create such folders, it was
no problem. And using Thunderbird or Claws mail is a workaround.

Or the solution - with bugs like these, I do no longer trust KMail:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=291006
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290363

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Kmail can't send any email after upgrade to 12.04 ! (window becomes grey ) Do you reproduce it ?

[Alex Schuster]

Maxime. Haselbauer writes:

> I can't send any email anymore since upgrade to Kubuntu 12.04
> I had 11.10  with KDE 4.8.2 already and it (sort of) used to worked
> before. I think it is related to a bug I already reported under 11.10 :
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298701

bugs.kde.org is down at the moment...


> Does anyone has a workaround?

Can you switch to another mailer? Thunderbird works fine, and many people
(including me) are using Claws mail. I have finally given up on KMail, it
is too unstable, and while moving an IMAP folder it ate all mails in it.
That's when I abandoned it mostly.

Claws cannot use local maildirs, and I'm not sure about Thunderbird, but
at least you would have a way to send mails.

I am using IMAP these days, that way it does not matter much which mailer
I use, they all show the same. Of course that's different when you use
local mails or POP3.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KAddressbook Spawning Tags

[Alex Schuster]

Lex Middelberg writes:

> > From: Martin Bednar 

> > Have you tried backing up those  contacts, deleting the resource and
> > creating a new one?
> 
> Why would that work?  How should I do that?  Through Systems-Settings?

Yes, in the personal information module.


> > If you're not using nepomuk for other things, you can start from
> > scratch (new  user/delete nepomuk configuration), I guarantee that
> > will get rid of the tags. You will then have to recreate the akonadi
> > nepomuk feeder though.
> 
> Isn't that a bit extreme?

It is. It might clean things up, but I also absolutely hate to do this. I
started with a clean .kde directory for three times since I went to KDE
4, and it did not help much. Some things got fixed indeed, but most
problems stayed.
This Akonadi stuff is intended to help me, but in the end it makes me
spend much more time with it trying to solve problems I would not have
without. Well, most things seem to work by now, except for KMail. I just
started it today to test some things. Searching messages especially, I
misunderstood something in Claws so I gave KMail a try. Which never ever
found a message when I was doing a full text search in the past. So I
tried again, and, guess what. Nothing happens. There's also an IMAP folder
that is not accessible suddenly. Whatever. I restarted Akonadi, no
change. I restarted Kontact, still this one folder is not accessible. But
wow, now I see a result in my last search, two messages were found. Okay,
there should be three, but it's better than nothing.
Other mysterious things: I have some new local folders now ('Lokale
Ordner' which means local fodlers in German), with two empty sub-folders
for outbox sent mails. All shown in red. While the 'Local Folders' I
created myself show up in gray, with some messages in them, but when I
click one, I get a notification that th eelement cannot be fetched in
offline mode.
Those are new problems, but hey, I am not surprised, and I do not even
care about them any more. I switched to something else, I am free now,
fre! Muahahaha.

> See above, I don't know what else nemopuk is linked to.  I am not aware
> that it does anything else on my system.
> 
> If I create a new user what about my emails and contact list?  What
> about my data in the home directory of the current user?  What about my
> accounting data and the data and configurations stored by all my other
> software?

I wouldn't create a new user, but instead rename the .kde
and .local/share/akonadi directories. And copy stuff you want to keep from
there over to the new .kde directory. Create your new Akonadi resources,
and point them to your existing data in .local/share/. As I said, this is
a process I absolutely hate to do, but at least you can be sure to get
rid of old cruft then. If it does not help, remove the .kde directory and
rename your old one back.

Good luck,

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KAddressbook Spawning Tags

[Alex Schuster]

Renaud (Ron) Olgiati writes:

> On Saturday 19 May 2012 05:54 my mailbox was graced by a message from
> Duncan who wrote:
> >  Switching 
> > my mail archive, address book, and mail filters over to claws-mail
> > wasn't easy, but it was worth it, for sure, and the worst I get in a
> > crash is a few read messages showing up as unread, again, if it
> > hadn't yet saved that status.  YMMV, but claws-mail was a better
> > solution for me anyway, 
> 
> What are the best choices for replacing Kmail ?

As Duncan, I have switched to Claws Mail. I miss some features, but it
does the job. I did not migrate my local mails to Claws' mbox format, but
I do not have many, so this is no problem. I still use Kontact/KMail
occasionally, but often when I do, strange things happen.

Thunderbird also seems to work fine.

> I am getting fed up waiting ten seconds whenever I press + to go to the
> next unread message

This is faster here, but often some read mails do not become unread. Many
of other small issues, like specific folders that cannot be displayed
(unable to fetch from backend). And after it ate thousands of my mails,
when I only wanted to move an IMAP folder to another location [*], I
decided to stay away from it. At least for a while. And I will never try
operations that potentionally make me lose data, without making sure I
have backed it up.

Too bad, I really liked KMail. But my data is more important to me.

[*] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290363

Wonko
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Re: [kde] plasma-desktop using 100% of 1 core

[Alex Schuster]

Barry Scott writes:

> > Please avoid posting in HTML to the lists.  Keep it plain text and 
> > everyone stays happy. =:^)
> 
> Oh. I had kmail configured to use plain text for this identity...
> Hummm... I cannot find the force plain text option in kmail now.
> I'm running 4.8.2.

In the composing window's options menu, there is a HTML checkbox. This
setting seems to be global, so you only need to uncheck it once.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] plasma-desktop using 100% of 1 core

[Alex Schuster]

Barry Scott writes:

> After a forced reboot of my Fedora 16 system I am seeing plasma-desktop
> use 100% of 1 core after a while. Killing plasma-desktop and starting it
> up again is a temporary work around.

Does plasma still react, or is it frozen?

> Is this a know issue? What do I do to fix it?
>  
> If this is a new problem what advice do you have to investigate the
> issue? 

I had similar problems in the past. Sometimes it was a buggy plasmoid, so
by removing them one after another I was able to find out which one. You
can back up you .kde/share/config/ directory if you want to easily revert
to the original state, I think saving the plasma-desktop-appletsrc file in
there alone would also suffice.

You can also start over and rename the .kde directory (or try as another
user) to see if it always happens or if it is something with your
specific setup.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] k3b???

[Alex Schuster]

gene heskett writes:

> It did work, it burnt the bios update as requested.  And its 10,000%
> easier to type k3b in a user terminal than it is to wade through the
> menu's and find it, under archivers of all places.  Call me an
> anachronism at 77, but if I can spell it, I can type it a heck of a lot
> easier than I can hunt around in the cracks and crannies of a poorly
> laid out menu system.

I think the menu system is just there so one can see what's available. If
you know what you want to start, use KRunner instead. That is, hit Alt-F2,
and enter the name of the application. You don't even have to type the
full name, although in case of k3b the name is so short that you have to.
If you only type 'k3' KRunner offers conversion of 3 Kelvin to degrees
Celsius or Fahrenheit :-)
So KRunner does not only allow to start applications, but also to find
files, by name or by content when they have been indexed by Nepomuk. Or
emails, open windows and documents. Or audio files. It does calculations,
converts units, and much more. Have a look at:
http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Krunner

> So I suspect you are 200% correct. System housekeeping has never been
> kde's strong point.  :)  They get lots more points for making bz hard
> to use IMO. Its forgot who I am, again.  But funny thing, if I try to
> open a new account, it will toss it in the bit bucket because I already
> have one.

One month ago, I got this mail. If you didn't get it, they really forgot
about you. But why can't you open a new account then... strange. You
probably should file a bug report... oh, whoops!
And I assume resetting the password also does not work? What about
creating a new accocunt with a different email address?

snip---
Hi, 

In the past you have registered on http://bugs.kde.org. This could be as
a user to report a bug or crash within a KDE application or maybe you
have registered as a contributor or developer for KDE software.

We have recently installed a new update of the bugzilla software and we
would like to ask you to reactivate your account. This can be done in one
simple step: login on the http://bugs.kde.org site. Your username is the
email address we have sent this email to.

If you don't reactivate your account before March 30th we will block your
account from logging in until the password reset feature is used to set a
new password.

Sorry for the trouble, but we hope you will enjoy the upgrade. 

Best,

KDE Sysadmin
snap---

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Munch munch munch

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:08:08 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
> > And there was not much time between me moving the folder and KMail
> > crashing, probably not enough to actually download 12,000 messages
> > from my remote IMAP server to my local folders.
> > I also checked on the IMAP server, there is no longer a
> > Gentoo-User-2010 directory.
> 
> That's bad.  Any sane app won't delete the source during a move, until
> it knows the destination is safely complete.  Unfortunately, there's a 
> rather big question ATM as to whether the kdepim devs are sane... or to 
> put it a bit less severely... whether they actually consider the fact 
> that people depend on their tools, vs just using them as toys, no big 
> deal if they screw up.

I also couldn't believe what happened. I just tried that again, with a
folder containing a single mail only, which I just had copied into it.
Moved the folder to Local Folders/Backup.
Yay, instant Kontact crash.
After restart, the folder has indeed been moved. And when I accessed it,
I saw the mail - for a second, then it disappeared. Reloading does not
make it show up again.
When I look in .local/share/.local-mail.directory/.Backup.directory/, it
is empty.
Tried again with a fresh folder I created, put two mails into it, moved
the folder - no crash this time. But no content either.

And I tried again, just like before. Created a new IMAP folder, dragged
three mails into it. Thsi time, I got a notification: Virtyou: Select
failed, server replied: A003488 NO Empty mailbox name. Happens every time
I access this new folder where I just dragged the mails into. Until I
restarted Akonadi.

So, even if I do the same like before, different things happen.

Apart from the error message, I can access the folder and its contents.
And moved it to my local folders. Whcih gives me this notification
(translated from German): Virtyou: Error while deleting folder; the folder
list will be rebuilt.
Again, when I access the moved folder, the mails show up for a second,
then they are gone.

What is going on here... I just found this report, where someone lost 54k
emails when he moved an IMAP folder to another parent:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290363
Filed three months ago, by someone who lost 54,000 mails. And I am the
first one to respond.

About the devs' sanity... I would assume they do their best, but lack the
manpower they need. I guess they had the idea about akonadification,
which is good idea in my opinion, but they underestimated the work this
would be, and the complexity that emerged. Then they were behind
schedule, KDEPIM was hold back, and when it was decided to be stable, it
still had many problems, things that were not tested. I'm a developer,
too, and I know about these problems. All seems to work fine in your own
setup, but you need to test all kinds of setups, like those the users
have. Which often were created years ago, migrated, and which may contain
cruft that triggers problems you wouldn't expect.


> I had thus assumed that kmail/akonadi would have been sane enough not
> to delete from the IMAP server until the messages had actually been
> copied to local disk, even if the database indexing it got screwed.  
> Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.  Oh, well...  Just 
> more reason to get off kmail/akonadi if you actually rely on mail not 
> disappearing unless you actually delete it, I guess.

Yes, this is very scary.

> >> However, it was exactly that sort of games with my mail that I had
> >> had enough of when I switched to claws-mail.
> 
> ... Even more so if they're deleting from the remote when moving to 
> local, before the local copy is known to be safely stored away.

BTW, I tried the same with another IMAP account, just in case it is
triggered by a remote problem. But the same happens.

> > BTW, there is no function to just move on to the next unread mail,
> > wherever it is, or is there? I can move to the next unread mail of the
> > current folder, and I can move to the next unread folder. No big deal,
> > but somewhat inconvenient. In Claws I just press the space bar,
> > advancing from page to page, from mail to next unread mail, from
> > folder to next unread folder.
> 
> I wouldn't know, as that doesn't match my usage pattern at all.  I 
> routinely deliberately leave messages marked unread, to come back to 
> later.  So when I'm done in a folder, I'll move to another SPECIFIC 
> folder, not simply the next one with unread messages.  And when I'm
> done with a message, I'll often move to another SPECIFIC (by title or
> author or whatever) message, as well, not just the next message or next
> unread.
> 
> So when there's hotkeys for next unread and next unread fol

Re: [kde] Munch munch munch

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:00:37 +0200 as excerpted:

> > After a while, I got LOTS!! of notifications:
> > - Local Folders: Error: Not supported type (this one for dozends of
> >   times). BTW: Is there a log of all those notifications? I could
> > access the last ones via the thingy in the panel, but after a while
> > they were all gone.
> 
> There should be, yes.  It'll be in your akonadi dir, which should be 
> located under one of either XDG_DATA_HOME or XDG_CONFIG_HOME, IDR
> which. There should be two logs, one for the current akonadi session,
> one for the previous, if there were errors (not if there were none).
> IIRC one of the akonadi-test/config tools has a test that will give you
> the status of these logs, etc.

In .local/share/akonadi/ I have akonadi_control.error.old and
akonadiserver.error.old, each containing a single line only. But I had
some logins after that incident, these days I'm having many more KDE
problems, with plasma, which is unusable at the moment. I experience this
for some das now, normally it suffices to restore my
plasma-desktop-appletsrc file from a backup, but now this no longer
helps. 

Still, some log of ALL notifications somewhere would be nice to have.


> > Kmail crashed then. After restart, the Archives/Gentoo-User-2010
> > folder is gone. But 'Local Folders/Backup' is still empty. So, it
> > seems that KMail just ate a whole folder containing 12,000 mails.
> > It's no big trouble, I don't need those old mails, and I would have a
> > backup. But I don't think I will ever do such a thing again in KMail,
> > at least not without prior duplicating of the folder. This is so
> > creepy. I read about KMail destroying mails, but that was during the
> > migration from KMail1 to KMail2, not a simple task like moving mails
> > around.
> 
> I'm guessing that if you check the actual filesystem, you'll find most
> of the messages safely stored in maildir.  The akonadi database doesn't 
> actually store the messages, only indexes them.  It's that index that's 
> probably corrupt, and if you find the the actual dir location, you may
> be able to (delete if necessary and...) recreate a new akonadi resource
> out of it, thus allowing a reindex.

Well, the resource points to .local/share/local-mail/, which only has
empty cur, new and tmp directories. And
there's .local/share/.local-mail.directory/, which has the
subdirectories of my local folders, but the Backup/ directory is empty. I
just moved a single mail to Local Folders/Backup, and it showed up there,
so this IS the real location of my mails. And it should be like this,
it's set like this in the local folders resource.
And there was not much time between me moving the folder and KMail
crashing, probably not enough to actually download 12,000 messages from my
remote IMAP server to my local folders.
I also checked on the IMAP server, there is no longer a Gentoo-User-2010
directory.

> However, it was exactly that sort of games with my mail that I had had 
> enough of when I switched to claws-mail.  Claws may have
> single-threading and responsiveness issues, but it has yet to barf all
> over my mail and try to lose bits of it, forcing me to play hide and
> seek with mail that DID "just work" with kmail, until they akonadified
> it, as akonadi was doing.

Yes, I was quite happy with the old KMail. The new one still has many
problems which happen every day. Like showing unread mails which I
already hav read. Sometimes it helps to select them again, sometimes even
this does not work.
There is an IMAP folder that KMail shows to have 8 unread mails, but when
I select it: 'Unknown Error. (Unable to fetch from backend)'. I just
removed this folder from my subscription, now at least I can browse
through my new mails whithout always getting this error when I bypass
this folder.
BTW, there is no function to just move on to the next unread mail,
wherever it is, or is there? I can move to the next unread mail of the
current folder, and I can move to the next unread folder. No big deal,
but somewhat inconvenient. In Claws I just press the space bar, advancing
from page to page, from mail to next unread mail, from folder to next
unread folder.

Maybe I should move away from KDE apps. Use Claws or Thunderbird instead
of KMail. Liferea instead of Akregator which makes Kontact crash several
times a day. Something else instead of KNode which often forgets which
articles I have read already. Although I'd miss things like the adress
book, and things being integrated.
Konqeror also crashes too often, but it's still my default browser.

And Plasma... it's acting weird so often. Yes, I could try to start with
a fresh install, but I do not want to do this once per y

[kde] Munch munch munch

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

What I just did:

- Rename IMAP folder 'Archives/2010' to 'Archives/Gentoo-User-2010', using
  Claws Mail
- Wait until KMail shows this folder with its new name. Got some Akonadi
  errors meanwhile, but I'm getting used to it
- Move this folder to 'Local Folders/Backup/'

After a while, I got LOTS!! of notifications:
- Local Folders: Error: Not supported type (this one for dozends of
  times). BTW: Is there a log of all those notifications? I could access
  the last ones via the thingy in the panel, but after a while they were
  all gone.
- Virtyou: Connection aborted
- Virtyou: There is no connection to the IMAP server
- Local Folders: Item query returned empty result

Kmail crashed then. After restart, the Archives/Gentoo-User-2010 folder
is gone. But 'Local Folders/Backup' is still empty. So, it seems that
KMail just ate a whole folder containing 12,000 mails. It's no big
trouble, I don't need those old mails, and I would have a backup. But I
don't think I will ever do such a thing again in KMail, at least not
without prior duplicating of the folder. This is so creepy. I read about
KMail destroying mails, but that was during the migration from KMail1 to
KMail2, not a simple task like moving mails around.

You see, I'm still with KMail. At least sometimes. I'm using Claws for
daily stuff, but did not configure stuff like encryption yet. And I would
prefer to use KMail for local directories.

I also see some benefits of the akonadification. For example, Claws does
not let me configure any accounts while a composing window is open. No
major annoyance, really, but KMail does not have such issues. It also
does not pause while checking for new mails, which Claws does. It's just
that there are still sooo many little problems with it. Claws is easier
to use.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE 4.8.1 doing strange things with some applications

[Alex Schuster]

Found the solution, thanks to Duncan and rex for pointing to [oxygen-]GTK. 
Systemsettings -> Look and feel of applications (translated) -> Gtk config, 
thange the theme from oxygen-gtk to something else.

I wanted to file a bug, but this has been done already:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=295875

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:57:38 +0100 as excerpted:
> > pete writes:

> But based on the behavior you mention, with it happening in other DEs
> besides kde with your regular user, but not with a new user... except in
> kde...
> 
> It sounds to me like it might be due to some bit of the gtk
> configuration, or some such.  Of course, claws-mail is a gtk-based app...

Right!

> Note that with the xorg-server 1.12 update came inputproto 2.2, with
> multitouch support.  AFAIK some bits of gtk3 have multitouch support
> already, provided it's supported by X, and if you have that on your
> system (I don't, only gtk2), a rebuild of various bits of it against the
> new xorg bits may be in order.  I assume you did a revdep-rebuild, Wonko?

Not so often, but all is okay.

[Whoops, Kontact crashed at this moment, but when restarting this mail I'm 
composing is intact.]

> Also, it's worth noting that I do *NOT* use FEATURES=preserve-libs due to
> various issues I had with it early on.  IMO it's MUCH simpler to just let
> the old libs be pulled and let revdep-rebuild detect and fix the
> problems, than to monkey around trying to troubleshoot issues due to
> stale libs still being on the system, apps trying to load both the new
> and the old one together, etc.  YMMV but if you have it on, you might
> consider turning it off, and see if over time, your number of mysterious
> issues goes down.  Here, I could probably troubleshoot individual
> problems, but it really /is/ just simpler to disable the feature
> entirely, and let revdep-rebuild do its job without preserve-libs
> throwing a spanner in the works!

I like this feature very much. And in my opinion Gentoo without was somewhat 
broken. When a library is being updated to a new major version, applications 
not linked against the new version do not work, until revdep-rebuild has 
run. With the preserved-libs, there are no such issues. And it seems to work 
fine here. When the feature was new, there were occasional problems with 
stuff being rebuilt over and over again, but this did not happen again. 
Except for googleearth, which probably just does not pick up the new 
library.

> > P.S. when sending this mail, KMail asks for the SMTP server's password.
> > Why doesn't it use the KDE wallet this time? These are those problems
> > that made me switch to Claws. I'll restart Kontact and try again.
> 
> AFAIK it's akonadi that actually handles mail passwords, etc, now.

For fetching yes, as that's done by Akonadi in the background, but for 
sending the mechanism should be as ever. And it worked after arestart. Oh 
well.

> At least back in the 4.6 era just coming up on 4.7, when I exterminated
> akonadi from my system, one of my frustrations with the whole thing was
> that I have something like a half-dozen email accounts.  When I logged in
> or otherwise restarted akonadi, it would stall them all waiting for the
> kwallet password for the first one, but if I provided it, the others
> would remain stalled, until I manually stopped their fetchs and restarted
> them.  And I had to do that within the kwallet password timeout, or
> they'd have the same problem once again.

When I log in, the wallet is being opened as one of the first things to 
happen, and most of the time this works fine. Sometimes, I get KMail/Akonadi 
mail password requests before that, but I can simply cancel them, and later 
it works after I open the wallet.

> What was worse, if I wasn't interested in mail ATM and simply canceled
> out, then at the next timed check, they'd ALL come up individually, each
> needing it's individual password, with NO second chance to sign in with
> kwallet.

Right, I know this effect. I think it's still the same, but I don't bother 
to try this now, I already spent too much time resolving this Claws problem.


> It could also be that the mail server is having problems ATM, and what
> you're seeing is just how they end up being presented to the user via
> akonadi/kmail.

No, that was okay. Whatever, it only happened once, I have more annoying 
problems :)

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE 4.8.1 doing strange things with some applications

[Alex Schuster]

pete writes:

> I am having a few strange interactions here with KDE4.8.1  i use claws
> mail for the simple reason Kmail has caused me too much hassle
> recently  ,

Me too, for daily use. For encrypted mails or local folders I still use 
KMail. Or when Claws crashes after sending a mail like now.

>  all was well untill the update to KDE 4.8.1 then every time
> i send a mail it closes claws down if i open a compose window then
> think dont bother and close the window the entire claws vanishes
> Claws mail is version 3.8.0 on Arch Linux as in sig block below

Exactly the same happens here on Gentoo Linux since this morning. I am 
running 4.8.1 since two weeks ago, but there was an update to 4.8.1-r1 three 
days ago, and I did not log out of KDE since today. But there was also an 
update to Xorg yesterday, from 1.11.4 to 1.12.0.

The error message when started from a terminal is:

The program 'claws-mail' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 55930 error_code 3 request_code 151 minor_code 3)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

And it also crashes when I run it in another window manager like IceWM or 
Enlightenment, with KDE running at that time or not. It even does so when I 
rename the .claws-mail directory so it starts with default configuration.

However, it does _not_ crash when I run it with a new user with empty $HOME 
directory. Unless... this user is running KDE. But it only crashes from 
within KDE, it still does not crash in Enlightenment then. So, this user 
cannot run Claws from KDE, while I cannot use it at all now.

I did not investigate this further, I probably could do some config 
bisecting, but I have no spare time at the moment. Did you also upgrade X to 
12.0?

P.S. when sending this mail, KMail asks for the SMTP server's password. Why 
doesn't it use the KDE wallet this time? These are those problems that made 
me switch to Claws. I'll restart Kontact and try again.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Full screen screws up desktop

[Alex Schuster]

Renaud (Ron) Olgiati writes:

> I have noticed that after playing some games (Pinball and Xlogical) in 
> fullscreen, my desktop is all messed up with all the icons scrunched
> together on the LH side of the screen, as if I had done an Icon => Sort
> and this in spite of having the icons locked.
> 
> Is there a way to avoid this ?
> 
> KDE 4.6.5

I don't have icons on my desktop (only in folder views), so this never
happened to me. But sometimes when I start applications that change the
resolution (from 1920x1080 to something less wide), some windows have
moved to the left when I am back to KDE. I also had a similar problem
with plasma stuff, but that was long ago, maybe when I also was running
KDE 4.6. And before that.  I'm using 4.8.1 now BTW.

My sister does not have these problems on her PC, but she experiences
some weird flickering effects sometimes which seem to be KDE related, but
I only know about that from her descriptions, I did not actually see
this yet.

Anyway, my workaround since I started using KDE4 is to just not start any
of such applications while in KDE4. Instead, I have a 2nd session running
a simple window manager (IceWM, OpenBox, FVWM2, XFCE4 or whatever you
like) where I start this stuff from an xterm. Duncan's idea about using
an activity is an interesting approach, although I think I keep using my
method, as switching via Ctrl-Alt-Fn is probably faster.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] system activity / detailed memory usage in 4.8.1 ?

[Alex Schuster]

Martin Koller writes:

> In earlier KDE4 versions, I could look at a detailed process memory
> information window opened from the "system activity" process viewer
> window I get with Ctrl+Esc. In 4.8.1 I no longer have this option from
> them RMB context menu. Can anyone else see this mem-info window in
> 4.8.1 ? Has this been removed or what do I miss ?

Uh, interesting, never used this before. Nice! Yes, it's available and
working here with KDE 4.8.1 on Gentoo Linux.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] How do change the style of kmail favorites view?

[Alex Schuster]

Barry Scott writes:

> I just updated to F16 with kmail 4.7.4.
>  
> How do I make the favorites view be a list view not a icon view
> as it was in the older kmail versions? Googling did not find me an
> answer.

With 4.8.0: Settings -> Look & Feel -> Layout Tab, there you can set the
Favorite Folder to show up Never, as Symbol or as List.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE panel showing above some fullscreen applications

[Alex Schuster]

Dotan Cohen writes:

> KDE panel showing above some fullscreen applications, namely Virtual
> Box in full-screen mode. I therefore set the panel as "Windows Can
> Cover" but this quickly becomes annoying with other applications. I
> therefore tried giving Virtual Box full-screen capability from the KDE
> "Configure Window Behaviour..." options, but that for some reason
> makes Virtual Box the size of my screen, but it is displayed offset on
> the screen to make room for the vertical KDE panel, and thus I am
> missing the KDE panel's width from Virtual Box on the opposite side as
> it is off-screen!
> 
> Are there any other fixes for the KDE panel intermittently appearing
> over a full-screen Virtual Box? This is KDE 4.7 on Kubuntu 11.10,
> however I have had this issue with earlier KDE versions as well.

What about a workaround: Start a 2nd desktop session with a
lightweight window manager. Run VirtualBox there, and switch with
Ctrl-Alt-F7/8.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Switching Activities via keyboard shortcuts.

[Alex Schuster]

Dotan Cohen writes:

> I currently use one Desktop for Virtual Box, and another for
> everything else. I am considering switching this paradigm to having
> Virtual Box on one Activity, and everything else in another Activity.
> I am having these issues with Activities in KDE 4.7. If there is a
> workaround if if the issues are addressed in KDE 4.8 I would like to
> know. Thanks.
> 
> 1) There is no way to flip between two Activities on a single keyboard
> shortcut, as one can flip between two windows with Alt-Tab (called
> Walk Through Windows in System Settings). One can likewise set "Walk
> Through Desktops", but not "Walk Through Activities".

There is, Meta-Tab. Which is Windows-Key-Tab here, I'm not sure if this
is generally the case. Look at Systemsettings -> Shortcuts and Gestures
-> Global Shortcuts -> Plasma Desktop. I'm using KDE 4.8, but I'm pretty
sure this was already like that in 4.7.

> 2) Though there is a keyboard shortcut to open the Activities Manager,
> once there the mouse is necessary to actually switch Activity. One
> cannot simply choose an Activity via the arrow keys. I'm sure that one
> might be able to tab his way around in the Activities Manager, but
> that is not an efficient way to swap Activities.

Indeed.

> 3) There is no quick way to send a window to a different Activity,
> such as one can move a window to a different Desktop from the Task
> Bar's context menu -> Move To Desktop.

Open the application's window menu, there are two similar entries, To
Desktop and Activity. There you can select on which desktops and
activities the window should be. I just noticed this myself, I have
shortcuts to send a window to any desktop (I set them to Meta-Shift-Fn to
send to desktop n, and Meta-Shift-Esc to show it on all desktops), so I
never use the menu. Maybe someone should raise a feature request to make
shortcuts possible for activities, too.
It's not exactly what you asked for, because in order to move a window to
another activity/desktop you have to check the destination
activity/dektop, and then repeat and uncheck the current one.

BTW, I do not use activities at all, so maybe I'm overlooking something
here.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] how to fix non-starting kde in user account

[Alex Schuster]

sibu xolo writes:

> I am using a computer  with LINUX-2.6.35/kde-4.4.5.  One account has 
> developed a fault.  I can login via kdm and the machine then
> attempts to start kde. This then fails and the screen goes black. I
> miss the use of this account mostly because of email addresses stored
> in kmail. Does anyone know of a way to replenish kde  so that I can 
> access  kmail for instance.

Like others wrote, I would first try to log in as another user, or
rename my .kde/.kde4 directory (maybe even .config and .local) before
logging in and see if KDE will start then. Have a look at you
.xsession-errors file. Maybe also in /var/log/kdm.log. This might help
to diagnose the problem.

But in order to access your mails, select another window manager or
desktop environment when logging in at KDM. Like, Gnome, OpenBox, Xfce,
or whatever else is installed on your system. Then start KMail from this
environment. You do not need to actually run KDE to start KDE applications.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Strigi Indexer

[Alex Schuster]

Lívio Cipriano writes:

> I'm using OpenSuSE 11.4 with KDE 4.6 and my Nepomuk Controller
> indicates that Strigi is indexing a directory with 10 pdf and chm
> files, the bigger is a pdf with 23 Mb and the smallest is  also a pdf
> with 2.7 Mb. This operation is going for MORE THEN 12 HOURS NON STOP
> and Nepomuk uses constantly 90% of CPU time.
> 
> I know this is a bug, but is there any way to contour it and
> continuing to using Nepomuk?

I had similar problems, Strigi crashed when indexing some specific
files, and the whole indexing process started again.

My first 'solution' was to disable Nepomuk in systemsettings, and wait
until someone fixes this problem. Well, this did not happen.

The second solution was to find the specific fils that made Strigi
crash, and report a bug at [1], attaching the file. The next day, the
bug had been fixed. I had the same problem with yet another file,
reported again, and again, it had been fixed very soon.

Using Gentoo Linux, it was simple to install the current developer's
version of Strigi. With openSUSE it's not that easy. You could uninstall
Strigi and compile and install it yourself I guess. Or wait for an
update for openSUSE.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the simplest workaround: Open systemsettings,
desktop search, 2nd tab, and select the directories you want to have
indexed.

Wonko

[*] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=171000&atid=856302
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Re: [kde] Disable restart of LibreOffice

[Alex Schuster]

Jogchum Reitsma writes:

> I am bitten by a bug in Xorg (or possibly the nouveau driver), that is -
> a least in my case - triggered when starting LibreOffice. It's bug
> 719260  in
> bugzilla.novell.com.
> 
> Xorg crashes, and I could only send a reboot command from another
> system.

Try Alt-SysRq-R, this should take the keyboard away from X and
Ctrl-Alt-F1 should work again. Or Alt-SysRq-K, this will kill all
procecces of the current terminal.
When logged in from remote, you could try 'chvt 1' to change the console
(like Ctrl-Alt-F1).

> But the LibreOffice session is restarted every time I log into
> kde, so X crashes again immediately.
> 
> I've looked in ~/.kde4/share/config/ksmserverrc, but didn't find any
> reference to LibreOffice (or OpenOffice).
> 
> So how can I disable the restart of LibreOffice when logging in to kde?

Dou you have Konquerors, Konqui or Akregator sessions starting up
automatically? Here, whenever I start Konqueror and a page with flash
contgent is displayed, LibreOffice starts. Only once, it does not happen
again when I open such pages in other tabs. Maybe that's your problem,
too? I also did not find any reference to LibreOffice in ~/.kde4, but I
still did not invetigate this further, and for some weeks now I am away
from my KDE desktop anyway, So I don't care much.

My workaround was to rename the LibreOffice binary, so whatever will
start it, it cannot find it.

Wonko
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[kde] Using Kopete remotely (in Windows)

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

I am away from my KDE desktop PC, using my old Windows XP notebook. I am
still working on the PC, using NX to speed up X. This works very well
for stuff like xterm and NEdit windows. Qt-Creator is very slow, and has
killed the whole NX session for two times. But I do not use it often.
I also have Kontact running - this is somewhat slow, but I like to keep
track on what is going on in my Akregator feeds.

Now I would also like to run Kopete, because I do not have OTR enabled
in the jabber client (Psi) I run on Windows. It runs, but I see no
window - probably because I do not have KDE's system tray. Is there any
possibility to make it show up, like the --show option for
kwalletmanager? I also tried to start a VNC sever running twm or
openbox. Well, I guess could start my whole KDE session, but maybe there
is some simpler solution?

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Plasma crash and can't log in anymore.

[Alex Schuster]

Luis Ángel Fernández Fernández writes:

> On Martes, 13 de septiembre de 2011 17:00:38 Alex Schuster escribió:
> 
> > >   Any idea about what's going on and how can I fix it?
> > 
> > No. But I'd diff the output with the .xsession-errors you get when
> > using the failsafe session. So you can separate the critical errors
> > from harmless entries that happen every time. For example, I have no
> > idea whether those dbus messages are normal in your setup, or if they
> > are the root of the problem.
> 
>   Ok. It seems that those dbus messages are normal since I have them in
> both modes.

One thing less to check for.

>   The differences start just after those messages. These are the
> differences:
> 
> X Error of failed request:  BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
>   Major opcode of failed request:  138 (NV-GLX)
>   Minor opcode of failed request:  4 ()
>   Resource id in failed request:  0x1e3
>   Serial number of failed request:  33
>   Current serial number in output stream:  33
> kwin(15671): ""fsrestore1" - conversion of "0,0,0,0" to QRect failed" 
> kwin(15671): ""fsrestore2" - conversion of "0,0,0,0" to QRect failed" 
> kwin(15671): ""fsrestore3" - conversion of "0,0,0,0" to QRect failed" 
> kwin(15671): Shaders are not supported 
> kwin(15671): Shaders are not supported 
> plasma-desktop: cannot connect to X server :0
> plasma-desktop(15679): Communication problem with  "plasma-desktop" ,
> it probably crashed. 

I have similar kwin messages, too. But the X stuff is weird.

A shot in the dark: Can it be that compositing / desktop effects
are making trouble, and are turned off in safe mode? You could disable
them by setting Enabled to false in .kde/share/config/kwinrc, or better
use the
  kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing  --key Enabled false
command to do this.

No more ideas,

Wonko
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Re: [kde] Plasma crash and can't log in anymore.

[Alex Schuster]

Luis Ángel Fernández Fernández writes:

>   Today something very weird happened. I don't remember what I was
> doing exactly but suddenly "KDE" crashed and lxdm login showed up. I
> couldn't start KDE Plasma Desktop Session anymore and I get
> this .xsession-error[1]. However I can log in using some KDE Plasma
> Desktop Failsafe session kdm shows (after the crash I switched to
> kdm... lxdm doesn't show this "special" session). This failsafe session
> launch KDE Plasma using the --failsafe option.
> 
>   Any idea about what's going on and how can I fix it?

No. But I'd diff the output with the .xsession-errors you get when
using the failsafe session. So you can separate the critical errors from
harmless entries that happen every time. For example, I have no idea
whether those dbus messages are normal in your setup, or if they are the
root of the problem.

Oh, and I think that attaching short logs is preferred to using pastebin,
at least that seems how it is handles on most lists. Someone correct me
please if this is wrong.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE Panel freezing when HDMI connected

[Alex Schuster]

Tim Edwards writes:

> This particular plasmoid was downloaded by clicking the 'Get New
> Widgets..' button on the 'Add Widgets' dialog, so I would think it was
> as officially-blessed as any other that's available.

No, I believe those that already come with KDE are more official, and
better tested. Those that you download can be contributed by anyone, and
often they are new and not tested by anyone yet. My experience has been
that those often simply fail (sometimes due to missing stuff I would have
to install), sometimes make plasma crash, and I also experienced plasma
hanging like you did.

> I think it's more important that a plasmoid which freezes shouldn't
> also freeze the whole desktop.

That's just the way it is I'm afraid.

> You can't ensure the quality of plasmoids but surely someone can put a
> timeout of some kind in the plasma-desktop code so that calls to
> plasmoids don't wait forever for a response.

I don't know it this is possible for a single-threaded application, I
assume the answer is no. I do not think there is some sort of supervisor
that calls and controls the individual plasmoids. When a plasmoid's code
being executed, and that goes in an endless loop, it will stay, and
plasma will not react any further. At least that's my understanding.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE Panel freezing when HDMI connected

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Sunday, 2011-09-11, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Kevin Krammer writes:

> > > Retrieving data could still be done asynchronously, KDE's networking
> > > can do that even in a single threaded application.
> > 
> > Sure, I didn't want to imply that was a problem.
> 
> I didn't think you were, just explaining that there should be no
> blocking due to downloading data unless something is wrong.

Okay :)

> > > Looks like the respective applet or whatever it is using for
> > > downloading data is broken.
> > 
> > And it's bad that this is able to make plasma hang.
> 
> Unless proven otherwise I will assume that it is not.

Huh? I'm somewhat confused now. Something in the plasmoid obviously was
broken, and made Tim's plasma hang.
And this is a problem that happens regularly when trying custom
plasmoids. 

> As in I really don't see how non-blocking downloading could block an 
> application unless the application specifically blocks itself, which I
> would consider a bug.

I don't say the non-blocking download is blocking. It's something in the
plasmoid, whatever it may be. And as the result, all of plasma hangs.
Which is bad.

> > In the days of
> > cooperative multitasking, every application could make your system
> > hang - these days are over.
> 
> I've never had one application hang the system. Doesn't happen in this
> context either, the OP reports everything other than the hanging
> application working fine.

Yes, but I was talking about cooperative multitasking. Long ago, like in
Windows 3.x, where a single application could make the whole system hang.

> > But for plasma, it's still like this.
> 
> Highly unlikely. Since it did not happen for the OP, can you point to a
> report were hanging Plasma resulted in no other processes working
> either?

No, I was just saying that the individual plasmoids seem to use
cooperative multitasking. A badly designed, hanging plasmoid makes whole
plasma hang. Other processes are not affected, of course. So you can
continue to work, but as Tim wrote, many people will just think the
system is hanging, and reboot.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE Panel freezing when HDMI connected

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Sunday, 2011-09-11, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Tim Edwards writes:

> > > My theory is it looks like the Pyweather widget is hanging trying
> > > to get data sometimes, and this in turn hangs plasma-desktop.
> > > Which, if true, is IMHO a huge design fault in plasma-desktop.
> > > Anyway I'll see if this theory holds out, Pyweather's been removed
> > > and so far no freezes.
> > 
> > Yes, that's the problem with plasma-desktoüp, it's single threaded,
> > and if one plasmoid hangs, whole plasma hangs. I often had such
> > trouble when using plasmoids I downloaded fron the net.
> > 
> > I also believe it's a huge design fault, but there _are_ indeed
> > reasons for doing this, having to do with speed mainly I think. I
> > don't find the link right now where this was explained, but if you
> > are interested, I could search and find it.

Here it is:
http://www.freehackers.org/thomas/2009/11/10/wonders-from-a-kde-fan-and-developer-about-some-kde-design-choices/comment-page-1/#comment-7507

> Retrieving data could still be done asynchronously, KDE's networking
> can do that even in a single threaded application.

Sure, I didn't want to imply that was a problem.

> Looks like the respective applet or whatever it is using for
> downloading data is broken.

And it's bad that this is able to make plasma hang. In the days of
cooperative multitasking, every application could make your system hang -
these days are over. But for plasma, it's still like this. And it's
happened really often to me. Installing custom plasmoids often is no fun.
So I stopped doing this, and things are better now :)

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE Panel freezing when HDMI connected

[Alex Schuster]

Tim Edwards writes:

> Saw something interesting in the konsole window - just before the freeze
> ups each time there is output from the Pyweather plasma widget that
> shows it trying to retrieve weather data from the net. Currently our
> cable internet is out so I'm using 3G (USB tethering from the mobile
> phone), which in our house is slow and gets an intermittent signal.
> 
> My theory is it looks like the Pyweather widget is hanging trying to get
> data sometimes, and this in turn hangs plasma-desktop. Which, if true,
> is IMHO a huge design fault in plasma-desktop. Anyway I'll see if this
> theory holds out, Pyweather's been removed and so far no freezes.

Yes, that's the problem with plasma-desktoüp, it's single threaded, and
if one plasmoid hangs, whole plasma hangs. I often had such trouble when
using plasmoids I downloaded fron the net.

I also believe it's a huge design fault, but there _are_ indeed reasons
for doing this, having to do with speed mainly I think. I don't find the
link right now where this was explained, but if you are interested, I
could search and find it.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] KDE Panel freezing when HDMI connected

[Alex Schuster]

Tim Edwards writes:

> I'm running Opensuse 11.4 with KDE 4.6 on a Netbook. When I plug the
> netbook in to an external monitor/TV after a few minutes the KDE panel
> (including all menus, icons, clock etc.) is completely frozen. Even
> after over an hour it remains frozen. 
> 
> All other software functions fine - firefox, Libreoffice, Thunderbird
> etc. and I can use alt+tab to switch between them. I can't launch new
> programs since the KMenu is frozen

I think KRunner (Alt-F2) should still work.

>but I have a konsole window open I
> can run programs from there. All these programs, including KDE-specific
> ones such as Dolphin, work fine, without freezing or pauses.

Looks like plasma-desktop froze. Does top show this process with 100% CPU
usage? This happened to me often.

Try this in your Konsole in order to quit plasma and restart it:

  kquitapp plasma-desktop; plasma-desktop

If kquitapp does not work, try killall -9 plasma-desktop instead. If it
hangs again, maybe you see some output in the Konsole that helps to see
what the problem is.

Good luck,

Wonko
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Re: [kde] proxy settings

[Alex Schuster]

Osvaldo Martin writes:

> Proxy setting can be stored in the environment variable HHTP_PROXY (I
> think this works in every Linux), but in GNOME the proxy setting could
> be configured using "Network Proxy Preference" in that case proxy
> setting are stored inside Gconf. KDE uses environment variable
> HHTP_PROXY and/or other place to store proxy settings?

Start systemsettings, look in the networking and connectivity section,
network settings. There you can configure to:

- do not use a proxy
- automatically detect the proxy
- configure it by URL
- use the environment variables
- set it manually

Wonko
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Re: [kde] I just noticed: no more crashes! Thanks, KDE team!

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:27:10 +0200 as excerpted:

> > Duncan wrote:
> >> Dotan Cohen posted on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:04:31 +0300 as excerpted:

> > I also switched from Dolphin to Konqueror.
> > 
> > I had to remove the web search field in the toolbar, because that
> > would make the address field too small. I wonder why the search field
> > is active when Konqueror is in file management mode, this does not make
> > sense to me. But it's no problem, I don't use this field much, and use
> > the shortcuts (gg for Google etc.) instead.
> 
> I don't know why it's there in file management profiles unless that
> setting isn't per-profile, which could be the case, since killing the
> search bar is one of the first things I do, regardless of the browser.

The field wasted only a little space, and I didn't have to remember the 
shortcuts for the different search sites, but I don't miss it at all now.


> > I also don't like how Dolphin/Konqueror start scrolling
> > when I drag files to a folder that is near the top/bottom. There is a
> > little lag, so when I drop the files, they end up in the wrong folder
> > as the thing just started to scroll. Really, I sometimes wish it
> > would just work like Windows XP's explorer, where at least I do not
> > have such problems.
> 
> I've not used MSWormOS for so long (save for very occasionally on others'
> systems, since 98, as MS pushed me off with eXPrivacy) that I really
> don't have the foggiest how it operates any more.
> 
> But I too occasionally have DnD drop-scrolling issues.  Generally not bad
> ones, tho, since I've learned to pause over the target slightly,
> confirming that it's going to do what I want, before I drop.  Thus, I've
> generally not dropped yet when it scrolls, and I can grumble just a bit
> and trigger a reverse scroll so I can drop the stuff where intended.

I also drag a lot of mails into KMail folders, and this feels much, much 
better. The scrolling only happens when I drag to the very top or bottom of 
the folder list, and does not already start when I am near. And it starts 
instantaneously, not after a pause, when I just dropped the file.

> But 90+ percent of my moves and copies are either in mc or at the command
> line anyway, and about half the rest are via browse-dialog instead of
> DnD,so it's not something I run into much since I simply don't DnD much.

I use it mainly for sorting video clips I downloaded.

> > About the crashes with Gwenview showing multimedia files: My bug
> > report
> > [#279624] was confirmed by someone else. I found out that this only
> > happens with ffmpeg 0.7.3 installed, so a downgrade solved this
> > problem. I reported this upstream in [#410], and it looks like they
> > found the problem. It will be solved in 0.7.4.
> 
> Looking at the bug, no wonder I didn't run into it.  I had strigi and
> nepomuk turned off, and now have USE=-semantic-desktop set and don't even
> have nepomuk at least, installed (strigi seems to be an unconditional
> depende of kdelibs, but whatever, at least it seems harmless without
> nepomuk).

Do you have Dolphin/Konqueror configured to show short infos for the files 
the mouse is over? I would think that -semantic-desktop disables the 
indexing done by Strigi, but in this case it looks to me that Strigi is 
doing the analyzing of what type of file this is.

> > List of weird stuff happening in the last weeks since I last wrote
> > something here:
> > 
> > One day, the bouncing mouse cursor that indicates a starting program
> > did not go away. The problem was that I was doing important stuff
> > involving VMware Player, and could not easily log out and in again
> > for a while. This drove me crazy :)
> 
> I used to have problems like that occasionally, but haven't in quite
> awhile.  When I did, I made it a point to configure a custom busy cursor,
> that still had a pointer (the background-busy from a different cursor
> scheme, usually), so if it got stuck, I could still use the pointer.

Using was no problem at all, it's only that the constant hopping annoyed me.


> > On two occasions, the Windows and Ctrl keys no longer worked. Had to
> > log out and in again.
> 
> That's weird.  I've not see anything like that recently, at least on my
> machine (something similar happened at work today, tho, to the POS
> system, rebooting fixed...), but if it was going to be a bother to
> logout, I'd probably first try unplugging/replugging the USB keyboard,

I had this before, maybe three times per year. The keyboard is PS/2, I do 
not dare to unplug it. Th

Re: [kde] I just noticed: no more crashes! Thanks, KDE team!

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

I've been sort of busy for a while, and then a little ill, so not much 
acitivity here and with KDE. But here comes an update.

Duncan wrote:

> Dotan Cohen posted on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:04:31 +0300 as excerpted:

> > Dolphin has the separate process option too, it's just in Konqueror.
> > From what I understand enabling this option in Konqueror enables it
> > for Dolphin as well, because the Konqueror file manager in KDE 4 is just
> > an embedded Dolphin part. I can't crash Dolphin to check, but I can tell
> > you that keeping Konqueror preloaded makes Dolphin start up much
> > faster as well.
> 
> Thanks for pointing that out! =:^)
{,...]
> Looks like between you and me, we just solved Alex's problem, as soon as
> he sets that option! =:^)

Works fine, thanks Dotan! Well, only that these days the crashes mainly 
happen with the Dolphin on the multimedia desktop, that has two tabs with 
two panes each. So it's still some work to re-create this. But it's not that 
happens on a daily basis.
Session management like in Konqueror would be nice :)  That one crashes 
fairly often, but as long as the state I was in is restored, I don't mind 
much.

I also switched from Dolphin to Konqueror. Not much of a difference, though. 
Except for the update problem in Dolphin, sometimes it just does not update 
the display, my usual trick to force an update is to minimize the window to 
the title bar and back to normal size. Konqueror does not do this, so I use 
it now.
I had to remove the web search field in the toolbar, because that would make 
the address field too small. I wonder why the search field is active when 
Konqueror is in file management mode, this does not make sense to me. But 
it's no problem, I don't use this field much, and use the shortcuts (gg for 
Google etc.) instead.

My other problems with Dolphin still happen in Konqueror. Like the really 
nasty drag&drop problem, which is reported as [#267188], but seems hard to 
reproduce. I tried to create some sample folders, and did not succeed. I 
also don't like how Dolphin/Konqueror start scrolling when I drag files to a 
folder that is near the top/bottom. There is a little lag, so when I drop 
the files, they end up in the wrong folder as the thing just started to 
scroll. Really, I sometimes wish it would just work like Windows XP's 
explorer, where at least I do not have such problems.

About the crashes with Gwenview showing multimedia files: My bug report 
[#279624] was confirmed by someone else. I found out that this only happens 
with ffmpeg 0.7.3 installed, so a downgrade solved this problem. I reported 
this upstream in [#410], and it looks like they found the problem. It will 
be solved in 0.7.4.

List of weird stuff happening in the last weeks since I last wrote something 
here:

One day, the bouncing mouse cursor that indicates a starting program did not 
go away. The problem was that I was doing important stuff involving VMware 
Player, and could not easily log out and in again for a while. This drove me 
crazy :)

On two occasions, the Windows and Ctrl keys no longer worked. Had to log out 
and in again.

Konqueror once was not able to log into my online banking site, I got an 
error that I had to give account number and password, which Konqueror 
clearly showed, but they were not sent. Again, after the next login the 
problem was gone.

For some days now, when I start Konqueror and enter any URL, LibreOffice 
starts. I have NO IDEA why. Sometimes this even happens when I am using 
Akregator and show a site in a new tab. Weird.

Suddenly, *.wav files are associated with Dolphin? And opening a .was file 
with Amarok did not work. probably unrelated, but at this moment I started 
getting high load, up to 52, iotop showed the akonadiserver process doing 
stuff.

Downloading subtitles from opensubtitles.org with Konqueror resulted in 
many, many crashes. And while I usually opened the .zip files in Ark and 
dragged the files I needed to the destination, Ark now does not show any 
files, so I have to save the .zip file and unpack manually.

akonadi_maildispatcher_agent once crashed when sending a mail.

Sometimes, clicking at desktop #3 on the pager plasmoid in the panel does 
nothing. Only happens with this desktop, not the 5 others. My shortcut still 
works, which I prefer anyway because it is faster - the reaction is 
instantaneous, while when using the plasmoid it sometimes takes over a 
second until I get a response. Huh?

Discovered a problem with KMail2 not showing header titles (like From:, To:, 
X-Bugzilla-URL:). Filed bug [#280670].

Another Kmail2 annoyance is that the subject and sender is lost when KMail 
is quit with open composing windows. After restart, the windows re-appear, 
but I have to find and enter the subject manually. Happened countless times 
for me, also with this mail. Known bug [#280642], fixed in 4.7.1.

One day, KMail did not show any new mails in the morning. Had to restart 
both Akonadi and KMail to make

Re: [kde] I just noticed: no more crashes! Thanks, KDE team!

[Alex Schuster]

Dotan Cohen writes:

> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 16:35, Alex Schuster  wrote:
> > So, I just tried some things I never did before, and in two minutes I
> > found two bugs that always crash Gwenview,
> 
> I hope that you filed those bugs.

Not yet, but I will, when I have a little spare time. I started to do so, 
but it seems the bug depends on which directory I view, so I want to isolate 
the specific file that is responsible for this. First I thought it had to do 
with my German localization, because it did not happen when I set the 
language to English, but apparently I was in another directory then.

I usually report bugs when they are so clearly reproducible as in this case. 
And being a Gentoo user, I can also offer to build stuff with debug 
information in order to produce better reports, in case it does not 
reproduce for others.

Ah, what the heck, I filed it:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279624

> So far as I know Gwenview uses some
> Dolphin components for file viewing, and those problems you noticed
> probably cause related Dolphin crashers.

That would be great, solving two problems at once.

> > See http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2011-07-24/desktop2-1.png ,
> > or http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2011-07-24/ for images of
> > all my desktops.
> 
> I see a folder named Drugs, and you're listening to the Grateful
> Dead,... I assume that Gwenview is not the only thing crashing around
> your place this evening!

Hehe :) I like the Grateful Dead for their great music, and because there's 
tons of live recordings on the net for free - they did not mind, and that's 
cool. So I'm grateful for the Dead. 
For the folder, well, I have some 56 subfolders in my movie clips directory, 
there's a category for everything. But yes, I find drugs and especially 
psychedelics highly, um, interesting indeed. Not doing them often myself, 
but I could need some now, as the other things crashing apart from Dolphin 
and Gwenview are my car (it died two days ago) and now my phone.

Wonko
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Re: [kde] I just noticed: no more crashes! Thanks, KDE team!

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:47:14 +0200 as excerpted:

> > Some kde4init stuff always crashes short after login, but it
> > does not seem to matter much. Dolphin crashed today without apparent
> > cause, which is somewhat annoying because in this case all instances
> > crash, and always have two Dolphins with a total of six views. And
> > right now one Dophin is acting weird, one panel does not update when
> > I scroll or select stuff. Another one showed an empty directory, I
> > need to press F5 to see its contents. But at least some weird
> > drag&drop problem seems to be solved, files got marked afterwards as
> > if the mouse button was pressed.
> 
> Why are you using so many dolphins?

Because I am using them quite often. One is on my desktop for multimedia 
stuff, with one tab showing my music files, and another tab with my videos. 
Both have two views/panels, one showing the main directory, the other 
showing the incoming folder where new stuff arrives. I often download small 
video clips, they end up in /data/mpeg/Clips/incoming, and after I watched 
them I move them into one of many categories. I also use the command line 
for many things, even for file management (sometimes also using mx/Midnight 
Commander), but when it comes to multimedia stuff, I prefer something 
graphical. Dolphin is a nice tool for this, it shows thumbnails, lets me 
change the sort order easily. It is grouped to a Konsole window (I cannot 
say often enough how much I love this kwin feature), so there is not much 
space wasted, and most of the time those windows are minimized to the title 
bar anyway.
See http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2011-07-24/desktop2-1.png , or 
http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2011-07-24/ for images of all my 
desktops.

Another Dolphin on another desktop isn't being used that often. It's also 
grouped to a Konsole with multiple tabs, so most of the time I don't see it, 
but I like to have it handy in case I need it.

As long as Dolphin doesn't crash, it's great. If only this drag&drop problem 
I mentioned above were fixed. It seems to happen less often now with 4.7, 
but it's not gone yet. And I often see weird update problems now, like here:
http://www.wonkology.org/comp/kde/dolphin-weirdness.png


> Dolphin doesn't really seem to be
> designed for that sort of use -- if it was, it'd have options (as does
> konqueror, performance section in the config) both to have separate
> windows use separate instances (the memory settings, minimize memory uses
> threads on the same instance so if one crashes they all do, while never
> minimize forces separate instances for each window, so if one crashes,
> it's just that window gone), and to keep instances preloaded, so they
> don't take long to launch.

So KDE's default file manager is not meant to be used in multiple instances? 

> Or alternatively, do something like I do and use mc for sysadmin work,
> and gwenview for images and video, so there isn't much left for dolphin
> to actually do -- it's basically an enhanced file-open dialog, and as
> such, it doesn't generally stay open that long anyway.

I use mc sometimes, but I do most admin tasks directly on the command line.
Gwenview for images and videos? I just tried that.. oh dear, no, NO!!!1 I 
thought Gwenview would not be the best utility for this, but, sorry, it is 
totally unusable.

First, I like to move files between the two Dolphin panels. Gwenview shows 
files in a directory nicely, fine. But I like the detailed view, so I can 
see the full file name. Gwenview shows the file name in the same size as the 
thumbnail, I have to enlarge the thumbnails in order to see longer parts of 
the file name, but then I can display few files only. I checked the view 
menu, if there is a 'detailed view', but I only see thumbnail options, where 
I can select things like the date. When I select the date, Gwenview crashes, 
every time. So I try to sort files by date - not ideal, because I like to 
see _which_ date. But again, Gwenview crashes. Next thing I tried was to 
open another Gwenview, and to drag a file from to the other Gwenview. 
Drag&drop acts a little weird, I usually just drag a file and press the 
shift key, so the file would be moved. That does not work, I always get the 
menu asking whether to move or copy. Oh, even when I do not press the shift 
key, I drag the file with the mouse button pressed, release, and nothing 
happens until I press the button again.
And what happens then? I get a notification that a file is already existing.  
But it is not the file I dragged, no, it's the first file of the destination 
folder what would be overwritten with itself.

So, I just tried some things I never did before, and in two minutes I found 
two bugs that always crash G

Re: [kde] I just noticed: no more crashes! Thanks, KDE team!

[Alex Schuster]

Dotan Cohen writes:

> I was going through some old bookmarks when I found this post:
> http://gkiagia.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/installing-debug-symbol-packages-f
> rom-drkonqi/
> 
> I then realized that I don't remember seeing any KDE applications
> crash in KDE 4.6 or now in 4.7. In fact, it's been so long since I
> remember seeing Dr. Konki that KDE 4.5 probably didn't crash anything,
> either.

I see it every day. I'm on 4.7 now, and things seem to be a little better 
now. But still, Kontact (mostly because of Akregator) crashes daily here. 
Some kde4init stuff always crashes short after login, but it does not seem 
to matter much. Dolphin crashed today without apparent cause, which is 
somewhat annoying because in this case all instances crash, and always have 
two Dolphins with a total of six views. And right now one Dophin is acting 
weird, one panel does not update when I scroll or select stuff. Another one 
showed an empty directory, I need to press F5 to see its contents. But at 
least some weird drag&drop problem seems to be solved, files got marked 
afterwards as if the mouse button was pressed.

Oh, and the Amarok constantly uses 70% or one of my two cores. But it 
doesn't crash :)

> So the time to express appreciation for the KDe and Plasma devs. You
> guys are doing tremendous work and I thank you for that!

Indeed. Despite my constant ranting here, it's free after all, and it's 
great so many people dedicate their time to this project.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer wrote:

> On Saturday, 2011-07-23, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > I still have to do keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, and migrate my local
> > mail folders. What might be the difference between the
> > 'KMail-Maildir' and the 'Maildir' resources?
> 
> The first one can deal with KMail's "mixed tree", i.e. when some folders
> are in mbox format and not maildir. It also has read-only support for
> KMail1's index files, for applying previously stored flags and tags.
> 
> Due to that it is not as optimized as the normal maildir resource yet.

Could the problems below had to do with this, would a normal maildir 
resource possibly work better?

> > I chose to create a KMail-Maildir resource pointing to
> > my local mail directory (which I got from my backup, since KMail
> > somehow deleted those mails). KMail now shows the mail folders, but
> > they are all empty.
> 
> An over-optmization in a component KMail uses for mail folder display. It
> results in no mails being requested from the resource.
> Creating a message in such a folder should trigger a load of all others as
> well, or reload in Akonadiconsole.

I see. This works... sort of. When I drag a mail into one of these empty 
folders, things happen. Of course there is not much notification, but after 
a while, the content is there. So I repeated this for about a dozen folders. 
A few have > 10,000 mails in it, and it took several minutes to open the 
folder and display its contents.

And all sort of strange things happen:

Some unread mails do not become read when I mark them as read, or become 
unread again when I re-visit the folder.

Sometimes I cannot mark all messages as read - the shortcut does not work, 
the content menu entry is grayed out. Selecting all mails and then marking 
them as read works.

I then moved these KMail-Maildir folders into my local folders, because 
that's where I want them to be. Takes a while, but works. Until started 
getting many (hundreds) of these notifications, with hundreds of bin-bing-
bing notification sounds:

  Local Folders: Error opening /home/wonko/.local/share/.local-
  mail.directory/OpenXP; this folder is missing

I could not stop this. Quitting KMail did not help. I tried to stop Akonadi, 
this did not work. So I logged out and in again, same problem, and KMail was 
still unusable. Great. I finally solved it by deleting both my local-mail 
and the KMail-Maildir resources. Maybe I will try this another time, but 
then I'm not sure I will be using KDE for longer. These are other problems 
that happened today:

Akregator lost its web navigation feature, the back and forward buttons are 
grayed out. This makes Akregator totally unusable for me, I will have to use 
Liferea instead.

Konqueror lost the bookmark folder with my accounts. This happened before, I 
did not notice this for a long time. Some days ago, I copied these bookmarks 
form a backup into my .kde/share/apps/konqueror/bookmarks.xml file, and the 
bookmarks were okay. Now they are gone again.

My Wallet is not visible. It is being used, but I cannot see my passwords. 
There is no wallet application in the tray. kwalletmanager --show does 
nothing. But it works in another window manager.

Finally, after all of today's KMail/Akonadi trouble, all plasmoids were 
gone. Restored the config directory, I really should back it up every few 
hours. My KNotes work, but their positions are also mixed up.

All this is really getting on my nerves. KDE4.7 should be released today, I 
will give this a try, but I doubt all will be fine then. I think that was it 
then, I don't want to go though this any more, this is too much, there's 
problems every day, and some are really bad, like today. Sorry. It's hard to 
leave, because I customized things so much, and restarted from scratch one 
week ago, but this is costing too much time, I have to work with my PC, 
instead of figuring out all the time what is going wrong now.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:53:21 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> Oh, and do others here also store sensible things like my online banking
>> PIN in the wallet? Or is this considered too risky? Are there possible
>> security problems with this?
> 
> I store such things in kwallet, yes, for my home system.  I figure if 
> someone breaks in and steals it, I'll call the bank, but other than that, 
> the loss of a computer I can't afford to replace ATM would be worse than 
> anything else that'd happen.

Isn't the wallet secured by strong encryption?

> No the netbook, I deliberately do not keep any data that I'd be 
> uncomfortable having it go public (well, except my the Linux user account 
> passwords themselves).  That way, if it's lost, /all/ I have to worry 
> about is the physical property loss.  If I did choose to keep such stuff 
> on the netbook, I'd probably keep it in an encrypted fs of some sort, but 
> at this point it's simpler not to put anything like that on it.

My desktop is completely encrypted, just for the fun of it. The notebook
runs Windows, I don't do things like online banking with it. I'd have to
change mail passwords and SSH keys if it were stolen. But it is so old I
think no-one wound steal it :)

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

J writes:

> >From: Alex Schuster [mailto:wo...@wonkology.org]
> >PIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions
> >
> >> > Indeed, ready for use means to me I could do online banking with
> >> > it.
> >> 
> >> Hmm, I always do online banking with Konqueror. Have done so for
> >> years.
> >
> >I always get warnings about untrusted certificates. I must admit I do
> >not know much about this area (Duncan does), and when I view the
> >certificate it is said to be trustable, but I feel better using another
> >browser that does not complain about certificates.
> 
> This is a feature, not a bug. (I cannot believe I just typed that.)

:-)

> There is a transition going on between 128bit and 1024bit certificates. 
> This requires an intermediate certificate of authority.  Konqueror is a
> stickler for this step, while Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera aren't,
> as they tend to bundle the intermediate certificate with their build in
> chain.  When I install a new certificate for one of my webhost customers,
> I use Konqueror to verify that it has been installed correctly.  It is
> the only browser that checks each and every step of the certificate
> chain.  Technically any site that Konqueror complains about isn't
> properly installed and isn't properly secured.

Hey, cool! So Konqueror is leading technology again, at least in this area.

If you don't mind, I have one more questions on this. How bad is the 
security impact? For example, my online banking site is 
https://banking.postbank.de , probably one of the most used banking sites in 
Germany. How big is the risk of using it? Would you do this? What can be 
done to minimize the risk? Other than using Firefox and simply not seeing 
the warning dialog :)

Oh, and do others here also store sensible things like my online banking PIN 
in the wallet? Or is this considered too risky? Are there possible security 
problems with this?

And there's another issue I wanted to mention, but now I cannot reproduce 
it. The dialog that asks me whether to accept the certificate used to appear 
every time I open such a site, even if I choose to permanently accept it. 
Seems like this is now sorted out somehow :)

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Restoring the .kde4/share/config directory from backups did not help. But I 
saw lots of stuff like kdeinit4 / knotify4 processes, and then I finally did 
what I never did before in such cases: I rebooted. And things are working 
again now.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> I wrote:
> > Removing .kde4 now. Let's see what happens.
[Still many, many problems]
> Enough for now, there are other things to do. So, I spent quite some time,
> but KDE stuff still crashes a lot, and some things don't work. So maybe
> Duncan's second theory is right, about me being one serious unlucky guy.
> Still, I'm no too disappointed, I learned some stuff, and at least much
> cruft is gone. And login is much faster now. So there _are_ some
> benefits.

As the subject still is about my KDEPIM 4.6, um, impressions, I'd like to 
add that KMail is indeed running much better now. I still have the problem 
that I cannot import my local mails I had in the old KMail, I see the folder 
structure only, being empty. I can access the mails with mutt, so there 
shouldn't be a problem. I did not yet investigate this further.

But apart from that, KMail is running very stable. It did not once show 
unread mails that were not there, nor did I get those notifications (Saving 
failed, server replied: A015537 BAD Invalid system flag \RECENT) any more. 
Maybe because I am using disconnected IMAP again?

I swear that's all I wanted to say for the moment, to tell you that there 
are some things that actually work fine :) But right then, I started having 
problems again. First I noted that things became very slow. Changing mail 
folders, starting applications, all this stuff. There was no process with 
high CPU usage, so I have no idea what's responsible. I decided to log out, 
but before that I wanted to save my session because I had made some changes. 
The K menu opened, but that was all, I could not change to the 
logout/shutdown category. Plasma was frozen. Still, no high CPU usage. I 
used a dbus command I googled to save the session manually, then logged out 
with Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Next login, the session was okay, except for Amarok which was not started, 
and a Konsole window. I wanted to start it with KRunner, but Alt-F2 does 
nothing. And the K menu in the panel blurs the space where it should appear, 
but that's it. Plasma hangs. Ctrl-Esc does not start the top-like process 
viewer. I still can start KSnapshot with the PrtScreen key, but the save 
image dialog stays empty. Load is > 8, CPU usage is around 10% only. I 
killed and restarted plasma-desktop, which made my first desktop appear on 
the 2nd one, all other desktops were left black without plasma.

Next login, and the same happens: The K menu opens this time, but is not 
usable, and plasma hangs. I will now restore the backup I just made before I 
started writing this mail, I hope the configs had not already been corrupted 
then.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> Removing .kde4 now. Let's see what happens.

I'm back. I removed the whole .kde4 directory, and copied back my
Akregator and Kopete settings only. First I forgot to also delete Akonadi's
settings. And when I did so, I only deleted .local/share/akonadi, but
forgot .config/akonadi, so I wondered why my Akonadi ressources were
still in place. But finally it was gone, and created Akonadi stuff from
scratch, too.

I hope things will be better now. Some things that happened while
configuring the desktop:

Systemsettings -> Password and User access: I could make any changes here, 
getting a 'permission denied' error. Later, it was working.

Suddenly my desktop folder view plasmoid vanished. Oh dear. It looks
like it still is in my plasma-desktop-appletsrc file, so I already have
more in there than I should. This should be the entry:

  [Containments][1][Applets][2]
  geometry=20,20,600,400
  immutability=1
  plugin=folderview
  zvalue=0

  [Containments][1][Applets][2][Configuration]
  geometry=20,20,600,400
  immutability=1
  plugin=folderview
  sortDirsFirst=true
  url=desktop:/
  wallpaperplugin=image
  wallpaperpluginmode=SingleImage
  zvalue=0

I removed those entries, but on the next login every desktop showed the 
plasmoids of the fist one.

When I tried to add the 'Simple CU and System Viewer' plasmoid I
downloaded, plasma froze, and I had to kill and restart plasma-desktop.
Happened also with another plasmoid which I do not remember now.

I uninstalled the 'Kood Morning' plasmoid I also downloaded, because I
confused it with another one I really wanted. I de-installed by
choosing 'Add Widgets' and then right-clicking on the plasmoid. Then I forgot 
about this, so when I wanted to install other plasmoids and the plasmoid 
download dialog was still open with the Kood Morning plasmoid, I klicked the 
'Deinstall' button. Again, plasma froze and had to be killed.

When restarting plasma-desktop, some folderviews that I just placed where I 
like them to be lost their position, I arranged them four times until they now 
are correct when I log in.

Some kde4init process sometimes crashes no long after login, I had this 
before.

Konqueror shows files in my home directory when starting, although I told it 
so start with a blank page. Tried to reproduce this now, and got a page 
telling me the action could not be done, protocol could not be initialized, 
technical reason: process could not be started. I switched the application 
language to English, and now it works. Switched back to German, works, too. 
Oh, and it was the starter (in the quickstart plasmoid) that was wrong, when I 
start Konqueror via Krunner, it is as it should be.

My TV-Browser window was gone, and there was no icon in the tray. The java 
process was still running though. Killed and restarted.

The system was running at 100% for the whole night, nepomukservices was using 
70% of one of my two cores, accumulating nine hours of CPU time. virtuoso_t 
consumed around 45%. Strigi is disabled. Logging out took 1-2 minutes, of 
course also plasma crashed.
Nepomuk kept doing stuff even after logout, so I killed it. It did not start 
again then, and I got a notification that nepomuk indexing has been disabled. 
or something, the notification button on the systray does not react, so I 
cannot look up the exact error. When I run the Akonadi selftest, there is one 
error, Nepomuk service not registered a D-Bus. But at least it doesn't hog 
resources now.

Some minor annoyances:

The NEdit find+replace dialog vanished when I accidentally minimized it.
It was not in the list of minimized windows in the panel, but I could
make it show up again by using the desktop effect which shows all
running applications.

There are some configuration dialogs (desktop effects, KMail -> email editor), 
that ask me whether to apply changes, even if I made none.

Kontact complains at system start it is already running. This was a bug I had 
for a year or so, but recently it no longer happened. Looks like the bug is 
back.

KNode shows HGE icons again, bug #266129, no big deal. Dragging a favicon 
from Konqueror to the desktop still gives a starter with a silly name I cannot 
edit.

I have no contacts, which is expected. How do I proceed now? In Akonadi, I can 
create resources for personal contacts and for an address book. No idea what 
the differences are, and if it matters. The Handbook does not find 
documentation for it, and the online docs are for 4.4. Ah, but there is a link 
to Akonadi stuff (http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi_and_AddressBook), and there 
it says that the address book resource (the one storing stuff in 
share/apps/kabc/std.vcf) is not recommended. Fine, I just imported my contacts 
which I had exported before.

The nice thing is that I optimized my desktop a little. I did not (yet?) have 
problems with KMail. Well, German spell checking did not happen, until I 
changed the language from 'German' to 'German (Germany)'. Whatever.

Now I nee

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:07:33 +0200 as excerpted:
> > Duncan writes:

> I've been very happy with 4.6.95 (4.7-rc2).  There was one hiccup but I
> couldn't reproduce it.  But 4.6.95 has certainly been as stable as a
> release version here, and in fact, I'm happier with it than I was with
> anything in the normal 4.6 series.  The best kde4 versions I've run are
> therefore 4.5.4/4.5.5, and 4.6.95.  If 4.7.0 and the rest of the 4.7
> series turn out as nice as 4.6.95 has here, I'll be a happy camper
> indeed! =:^)

Sounds good! Also the thing about window settings you posted.


> Meanwhile/however, given your problems, I strongly suspect that your user
> config is screwed up, likely multiple files since you've listed quite a
> few problems that I haven't had with the same version (on the same
> distro).  If that's true, as I suggested in another post, it may be that
> you won't get rid of the whole set of constant bugs unless/until you
> clean out the config and effectively start from scratch reconfiguring.

Yes, I'm indeed thinking about this. Alas, when I've done this in the past, 
even in the 3.x days, it never helped that much. But I will give it a try. 
It will take a while to re-create things as they were. And I'll have to 
decide which things to keep. Archives of the comic plasmoid, customized 
starters, window rules, all those little files in share/*/. Well, let's 
see., I think I'll start bare, and maybe copy application configs back 
later.

> As I said when I mentioned that before, I normally don't recommend that
> (tho I do recommend bisecting the user config reasonably frequently...
> when it's a single problem), because in general that's not a solution I'd
> consider valid for me.  However, as you were mentioning potentially
> switching to a different DE entirely, and you'd have to configure it
> essentially from scratch, doing that again for kde isn't any different
> than for another DE, except that you're already familiar with the
> available settings and where to find them, in kde.
> 
> Then once you get a clean config that's actually working reasonably well,
> as I expect it will, 

I hope you are right.

> be sure and back it up, so you can restore a clean
> but customized backup. =:^) 

Sure, I do this all the time. I still have about 35 backups of my .kde 
directory, and that's only because I already deleted many.


> >> There's several possibilities for that.  One is setting the phonon
> >> output to the dummy audio device -- no effects or kde system sound,
> >> but anything using alsa directly, etc, should still work.  I
> >> believe I did that for a time back in the kde3 era (before phonon,
> >> obviously).
> > 
> > Although there are few system sounds I hear, so I probably wouldn't
> > even notice they're gone, I somehow would not like to be without any.
> 
> Yeah, but if they begin eating 100% cpu on a core...

Well, I didn't think it could have to do anything with phonon. Let's see if 
it happens again, it didn't for some days now.


> >> Another is switching the phonon backend.  phonon-xine gave me
> >> problems
> >> here but I've been very happy with phonon-vlc.  Some others have had
> >> good results with phonon-gstreamer but quite some time ago I had
> >> problems with gstreamer and it's an entire subsystem that I've
> >> avoided
> >> having on my system every since, tho in fairness the gstreamer
> >> problems are very likely long since gone, but I just don't want to
> >> load all those dependencies again for one little thing, and since I
> >> have everything else using something else, it's /always/ just one
> >> little thing, that would be changing over, so I never try
> >> gstreamer...
> > 
> > I'm using GStreamer, and Xine is also on the list. I think I read one
> > is deprecated and the other should be used, but I do not remember
> > which was which.
> > And now that you mention phonon-vlc, I remember reading somewhere
> > about
> > it and it sounded good. So I emerged it, and switched the backend.
> > Whoops, Amarok crashed. But it seems to work fine, let's see if the
> > situation with kded4/knotify4 improves. Although it didn't happen for
> > 2-3 days now.
> 
> As Anne already replied, it's phonon-xine that's deprecated.  I don't
> have gstreamer installed and wasn't particularly interested in installing
> it, so I've not personally tried it, but phonon-vlc worked FAR better for
> me than phono

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:27:59 +0200 as excerpted:

> > Then there's kded4 and
> > knotify4, I often have two of those processes running and eating all
> > CPU time until I kill them, this happens on another KDE4 desktop,
> > too.
> 
> I believe that's ultimately down to instabilities in the audio system
> (alsa, pulse-audio if you use it but I think you don't, etc).  Or it
> could be phonon-backend related.  Fortunately, I don't have that sort of
> issue here now, tho I have in the past.

No, I don't use pulse-audio. It's not too bad, when I see the CPU running, 
it usually is those two processes, and just kill them. This does not seem to 
harm, I hope this is true. My current strategy is to wait for 4.7 and see if 
it still happens.

> There's several possibilities for that.  One is setting the phonon output
> to the dummy audio device -- no effects or kde system sound, but anything
> using alsa directly, etc, should still work.  I believe I did that for a
> time back in the kde3 era (before phonon, obviously).

Although there are few system sounds I hear, so I probably wouldn't even 
notice they're gone, I somehow would not like to be without any.

> Another is switching the phonon backend.  phonon-xine gave me problems
> here but I've been very happy with phonon-vlc.  Some others have had good
> results with phonon-gstreamer but quite some time ago I had problems with
> gstreamer and it's an entire subsystem that I've avoided having on my
> system every since, tho in fairness the gstreamer problems are very
> likely long since gone, but I just don't want to load all those
> dependencies again for one little thing, and since I have everything else
> using something else, it's /always/ just one little thing, that would be
> changing over, so I never try gstreamer...

I'm using GStreamer, and Xine is also on the list. I think I read one is 
deprecated and the other should be used, but I do not remember which was 
which.
And now that you mention phonon-vlc, I remember reading somewhere about it 
and it sounded good. So I emerged it, and switched the backend. Whoops, 
Amarok crashed. But it seems to work fine, let's see if the situation with 
kded4/knotify4 improves. Although it didn't happen for 2-3 days now.


> > Oh, and plasma, it often hangs, or crashes, forgets its settings.
> 
> That has been quite stable for me lately, perhaps because after an issue
> earlier and having to hand edit a very complex plasma-desktop-appletsrc,
> I've been rather careful about playing around with it.
> 
> I DID edit out some serious cruft from that file, tho.  Few will be
> willing or able to spend the time I did to figure out the file and hand
> edit it like that, but wiping it and starting from scratch may help, as
> it's quite possible there's some cruft in there that's causing
> instabilities, especially if you're using the same base file as you were
> back in the early 4.5 era, which is when I had my issues and wiped out
> the cruft with a hand edit.

I once fixed some problems with this file, when the desktops had switched 
their order. This happened for again a couple of times, but now I just copy 
back the file from a backup. I did not dare to remove more of the cruft, 
because I am not sure if it really is cruft, or if I might damage some 
things.
The last time I started with a clean .kde directory was June last year, with 
KDE 4.4.4. BTW, I looked up the date by googling for a posting of mine on 
the gentoo-user list where I mentioned this, in a thread about KDE4 
problems. I first wanted to look this up browsing through my archive of this 
list, which I thought I had moved from my IMAP server to local already. 
Which is not true, but this way I found out that all of my local mails are 
gone. Here's what I wrote on this list about these folders:

  Still, my local mail folders were missing - the 'Local Folders' resource 
  points to .local/share/local-mail/, and when I change this to 
  .kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail, my folders there do not show up. So I created
  a 'KMail-Maildir' resource, pointing to that directory. So, even if the 
  locations of both the 'KMail-Maildir' and the 'Local Folders' point to the 
  same directory, only the former displays my custom folders. Then I moved
  my custom folders with KMail into the 'Local Folders', and FINALLY, things
  are back as they were.

My local mails have a 'Backup' folder with sub-folders for things like 
mailing list archives I do not want to have on the IMAP server because of 
their size, and because I rarely need them. The 'Backup' folder is still 
there, but no sub-folders.

Good thing I have my backup. So I just star

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Tuesday, 2011-07-19, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > I waited for over a year until I started filing the first KDE4 bug.
> > There were so many, and I thought filing them would not be necessary,
> > as the KDE developers just have to start the applications for
> > themselves and then they'll see.
> 
> Unfortunately that isn't as clear cut in reality as it is in theory.
> Any software with higher complexity than hello world has lots of different
> code paths, each potentially changing the internal state of the
> application or stored data it works on.
> Running into each combination of paths by incidence (aka "just start the
> application") is extremely unlikely (winning the lottery is probably more
> likely than that).
> 
> Anyone working in software engineering has had bugs that get reported
> repeatedly but it takes some specific detail in one report to actually get
> it reproducible for the person trying to solve it.

I understand this, I'm also developing software, and I wished it had fewer 
bugs. But in KDE I see many bugs that look like things were not tested at 
all.

An example is the bug in 4.6.3 I think when Konqueror send inputs to forms 
twice. Such bus just should not make it into a release, even KDE's bugzilla 
complained about duplicate edits when filing a bug.

Or KSnapshot, that has a Send to... button, but when you actually use it to 
open your screenshot in an application like Gimp or Gwenview, you got a file 
not found error because the number in the name has been increased by one. 
It's a known bug that has been fixed already, but I wonder how this could 
make it undetected into a release. 

Or when you open a zip file with Ark and drag a file somewhere, Ark always 
opens a dolphin window, displaying my $HOME directory, not the directory 
where I put the file into. I don't think this is how it is meant to be. 
Well, maybe Ark is deprecated now, as Dolphin deals with zip files nicely.

> And that it is just for the functionality provided by the application or a
> library shipped with it, not counting any kind of differences that might
> be caused by an external dependency or a modification the entity building
> the software.
> 
> I know KDE developers who run their git master checkout as their main
> environment, but their workflows or surrounding setups are often very
> different from those of non-developers.
> 
> For example several KDE PIM developers have been using KMail2 for somewhat
> between one and two years now, at least one even as a native Mac OS X
> apps. But none of them are using POP3 and several are using the same IMAP
> server software.
> 
> I always find it both fascinating but also demoralising how many things
> get discovered even during beta periods which only a few people
> participate in. Fascinating because one often cannot imagine (inspite of
> experience telling otherwise) that some often exercised code could lead
> to a different outcome than those known.

Point taken. Guess I will report some more bugs, in case they are not 
reported yet and do not always happen.

> > I understand this. That's why I prefer usenet much over web forums, at
> > least for things that are mostly text-only. The web is fast these
> > days, but I hate latencies when clicking through messages. Oh, and I
> > have to click, while navigation by keyboard is more practical.
> 
> Indeed.
> It is a pity that none of the common web forum software packages has a
> built- in news gateway.

I wonder why. Maybe because of things like BBCode that would make trouble 
for text-only newsreaders?

> > > There's that inevitable feel to it, for sure...  What got me was
> > > how
> > > blase' all the kde folks seemed to be to glaring konqueror issues
> > > like no proper ssl/tls certificate management, while all the
> > > while calling it ready for ordinary use.
> > 
> > Indeed, ready for use means to me I could do online banking with it.
> 
> Hmm, I always do online banking with Konqueror. Have done so for years.

I always get warnings about untrusted certificates. I must admit I do not 
know much about this area (Duncan does), and when I view the certificate it 
is said to be trustable, but I feel better using another browser that does 
not complain about certificates.

Now that I found out how to activate Webkit instead of KHTML, I'm using 
Konqueror more often again. It's still my favorite browser, but it made lots 
of trouble in the past. I really like the 'File -> Open with' menu, so it's 
easy to quickly open a page in another browser.


> > I'm using rdiff-backup, and I back up all my ~/.* files regularly. At
> > least every time before I save the session. take

[kde] Re: Plasma hangs, could not log in

[Alex Schuster]

Anne Wilson writes:

> On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 04:32:55 PM Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Anne Wilson writes:
> > > Recently I had a similar experience, in that the bootup sequence
> > > never finished.
> > 
> > Did you also get the black screen, and nothing else happened from then
> > on?
> 
> No, in my case KDE started to load - I saw the icons begin to appear, but
> when it got to the K icon it just stuck there.

Um, the icons of the splash screen? The last one is the big K here. Yes, it 
was stuck there, unless I waited for some minutes, or did some mouse clicks. 
And then all I got was a black screen.

[removing ~/.kde]
> > I hate to do this. Sure, it would help, as I was able to log in with a
> > test user, but configuring things back as they were takes quite a
> > while. And I didn't know beforehand it would take so long. I hoped
> > I'd find the problem soon, remove the offending program or plasmoid,
> > and all would be fine. I had similar problems in the past, and could
> > solve them this way. Like the dreaded bug that made the password
> > dialog useless when it was set to display three stars per key
> > pressed.
> > Then I would report the bug, someone would fix it, and it would never
> > happen again. The problem was that it does not look like there's a
> > single plasmoid being responsible for this, which was unexpected.
> 
> I talked with the Fedora packagers, and we went through such things as
> clearing out caches, but to no avail.  There comes a time when getting a
> serviceable desktop as quickly as possible is the imperative.  I would
> much prefer to have found the cause, but my friends at Fedora agreed that
> we had tried everything that stood a good chance of telling us something
> useful, so I made the decision to get back to work.

If I had needed my PC to do important things, I'd either logged into another 
window manager, or moved the .kde directory temporarily so I could work and 
investigate later. But I like to solve these problems soon, if not they tend 
to stack up :)

> > > > Ctrl-C in the Akregator main tab does not work. Akregator
> > > > makes Kontact crash about four times per day.
> > > 
> > > Check for updates.  I saw that a while back, but it doesn't happen
> > > now, so it's almost certainly version or distro-version specific.
> > 
> > The Ctrl-C thing?
> 
> No, the constant crashes.  It drove me wild for a while, but it's OK now.

Interesting, it's become much worse here, 2-5 Kontact crashes per day due to 
Akregator. Not long ago, this did not happen on a daily basis. Maybe it's 
since I am using KDE 4.6.5? Or could it be because I mainly use the Webkit 
engine now?
The most annoying thing about this is that I lose the from: and the subject: 
headers in mails I am currently composing. Akregator restores the session 
fine. If it doesn't happen more often, I can live with this. It's annoying, 
but worse tings happen here.

> > > Many of those things have already been addressed.  Yes, any
> > > database that attempts to index everything is going to be big. 
> > > The KMail issue, though, I consider to be more serious.  I take
> > > it that you are using the experimental KMail2?
> > 
> > Right. I thought it was considered stable by the KDE folks? I'm
> > running the ~amd64 branch of packagers, that is, they are not well
> > tested on Gentoo Linux, but are considered stable by upstream. At
> > least that's how I understand it.
> 
> No, it is considered stable enough for early adopters to do the final
> testing - and there have been many more problems than the devs had
> experienced themselves.  It has been suggested that deleting any existing
> Akonadi database might help in a lot of cases.  It seems that people have
> tried the pre- releases and may well have some incompatibilities hanging
> around from those earlier releases, but I assume that this is not the
> case for you.

This may be the case, I once had the new KDEPIM stuff running for a day, I 
think it was being unmasked accidentally. But meanwhile I deleted and re-
created all Akonadi resources.
After dealing with this for a while now, I'm getting used to it. And I know 
what to do in case of problems. This morning, for example, KMail did not 
show any mails, and I had to restart both Akonadi and KMail until it worked 
again. 


> > > I understand that IMAP and DIMAP have been merged,
> > > and I assume that that means DIMAP (downloaded) in every case. 
> > > I'm not too happy about that myself.
> > 
> > Well, at least it gives me a backup in case my IMAP provider's server
> > dies, or when I

[kde] Re: Plasma hangs, could not log in

[Alex Schuster]

Anne Wilson writes:
> On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 02:06:51 AM Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Hi there!
> > 
> > Me again. Sorry :)  But today I spent over 3 hours until I was able to
> > log into KDE again. So I'm asking if something similar has ever
> > happend to you.
> > 
> > Normally, when logging in, the splash screen appears for a few (maybe
> > ten) seconds, then it fades out into black, and it takes a little
> > while until auto-started applications appear. The background stays black
> > for 2-3 minutes, and finally all the plasma stuff appears. Before this,
> > the plasma-desktop process runs at 100% on one of my two cores.
> 
> Recently I had a similar experience, in that the bootup sequence never
> finished.

Did you also get the black screen, and nothing else happened from then on?

> After fiddlingfor a while I did the obvious - renamed ~/.,kde
> and got a clean kde.  I then copied back the essetials such as my mail
> configurations and ignored application and desktop (read desktop effects,
> etc.) altogether.  Those are easily fixed as you come across things. 
> I've had no problem since.  Clearly something had either become corrupted
> or carried over where there was an incompatibility.

I hate to do this. Sure, it would help, as I was able to log in with a test 
user, but configuring things back as they were takes quite a while. And I 
didn't know beforehand it would take so long. I hoped I'd find the problem 
soon, remove the offending program or plasmoid, and all would be fine. I had 
similar problems in the past, and could solve them this way. Like the 
dreaded bug that made the password dialog useless when it was set to display 
three stars per key pressed. 
Then I would report the bug, someone would fix it, and it would never happen 
again. The problem was that it does not look like there's a single plasmoid 
being responsible for this, which was unexpected.


> > Ctrl-C in the Akregator main tab does not work. Akregator makes
> > Kontact crash about four times per day.
> 
> Check for updates.  I saw that a while back, but it doesn't happen now, so
> it's almost certainly version or distro-version specific.

The Ctrl-C thing? This happens when an article is opened in a tab and I 
select some text. The alternative shortcut Ctrl-Insert works neither. But 
the context menu works. I'm running 1.7.0 on Gentoo Linux. 

[BUG-BUGS-BUGS]
> > resolution, this also might mess up your desktop. And some more which
> > I forgot. And that's only the bugs _I_ experience.
> 
> Many of those things have already been addressed.  Yes, any database that
> attempts to index everything is going to be big.  The KMail issue, though,
> I consider to be more serious.  I take it that you are using the
> experimental KMail2?

Right. I thought it was considered stable by the KDE folks? I'm running the 
~amd64 branch of packagers, that is, they are not well tested on Gentoo 
Linux, but are considered stable by upstream. At least that's how I 
understand it.

> I understand that IMAP and DIMAP have been merged,
> and I assume that that means DIMAP (downloaded) in every case.  I'm not
> too happy about that myself.

Well, at least it gives me a backup in case my IMAP provider's server dies, 
or when I'm offline. I was just surprised about the amount of data, when my 
backup partition ran full due to some extra gigabytes that were needed. And 
the backup runs much longer now. But it's a minor problem, I can well live 
with that.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Anne Wilson writes:

> On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 03:05:29 AM Duncan wrote:
> > > I thought there were some extensions to make [firefox feeds] work
> > > better. But then Firefox is the wrong application maybe,
> > 
> > I hadn't thought of that.  If I give up on akonadi, I'll have to take
> > a look.
> 
> Have you tried liferea?  I used it when akregator was giving me problems,
> and it's quite good.

Just tried it, and you're right! Feels quite similar to Akregator, and has 
no problems with web sites.

I found one drawback: It cannot download some images from KDE-Look, the 
background menu only allows to zoom in or out. Dragging the image into a 
Dolphin window works though.

It's the same with Akregator and Webkit (there I don't even have the menu), 
but when I start to drag the image and stop, it looks like it is being 
displayed with KHTML instead of Webkit now, and I get a context menu that 
allows saving.

A little while ago I would have switched to Liferea at once, but since I 
found out how to use Akregator with Webkit and since it saves the session 
(it crashes multiple times per day), it is well usable.

For the moment, I have the Liferea window grouped to the Kontact window, and 
will play with both this and Akregator. Thanks for the tip,

Wonko
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[kde] Plasma hangs, could not log in

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

Me again. Sorry :)  But today I spent over 3 hours until I was able to
log into KDE again. So I'm asking if something similar has ever happend
to you.

Normally, when logging in, the splash screen appears for a few (maybe
ten) seconds, then it fades out into black, and it takes a little while
until auto-started applications appear. The background stays black for
2-3 minutes, and finally all the plasma stuff appears. Before this, the
plasma-desktop process runs at 100% on one of my two cores.

This night, the splash screen stayed longer, much longer, sometimes more
than three minutes. Clicking with the mouse made it disappear earlier.
But then, nothing more happened. I once waited for about three hours.

This had happened before once, I mentioned it in a thread here some days
ago. I already had the impression that the cause was a CPU-intense task
ran by another user, because I could login once after I suspended that
task, but this was not treproducible. After I copied back my
share/config folder from a backup, it was fine again.

This night it was the same. I first tried copying back my config
directory, which did not help, but suspending the CPU-intensive task
helped. I tried two times with and two times without this task to
confirm this, then I went to bed.

This morning, well, to be true it was moe about noon, it didn't work
although there was no other task running. I tried to copy ove ran old
config diretory, then I did the same with the apps directory. And could
log in. Then followed some hours of bisecting. Changing things, trying
to log in, waiting for a while, killing X, and this over and over again,
dozends of times.
Finally I found that without a share/apps/plasma/plasmoids directory I
could log in. But I was not able to find a specific plasmoid that was
responsible for the problem. Well, I found one, but then it happened again.

So this loks to me like a bad race condition. plasma-desktop starts and
does whatever it does, loading plasmoids and such, and sometimes
deadlocks. Heavy system load increases the chance for this to happen.

Has anyone experienced something similar? This was a really bad
experience. I am having soo much trouble with KDE these days, you
probably read about it here, and now this. I used the waiting time to
try some things on a 2nd X server, like Enligtenment 0.17. I am really
really near to dropping KDE4, I just cannot stand these bugs that happen
all the time. Every day.

Ctrl-C in the Akregator main tab does not work. Akregator makes Kontact
crash about four times per day. At least KMail now saves the open
composing windows, except for the subject and the sender. KMail shows
folders with unread mails, but there are none. This Akonadi stuff
frequently uses a lot of resources. KNode frequently forgets all
postings. KMail does not know about my address book contacts,
distribution lists do not seem to work at all. Spell checking does not
work for German words with a 'ß' umlaut or with apostrophes, the 'skip
uppercase words' option has no effect. Plasmoids often don't work or
crash, plasma itself also crashes often. Sometimes it hangs for several
seconds, I don't think it was a good idea to make plasma a single
process. Additional activities appear out of nothing. Virtual desktops
change their order. Dolphin crashes from time to time, making all other
instances crash. Drag&Drop with this file manager is a total mess. FTP
with it does not work when there are umlauts in remote files. Local
files with wrong encoding even cannot be renamed with it. Somtimes it
updates when files in displayed folders are changed, sometimes not.
kio_thumbnail indexes over and over again. kded4 and knotify4 every day
run at 100% until killed. Shutdown or Logout does not work without
killing KMyMoney, sometimes also other things crash during logout and
prevent a shutdown. KWin has a memory leak and does weird things after
some days of uptime. Applicatiions sometimes start maximized or behind
other windows. Saving the session often fails and everything is messed
up. Strigi / Nepomuk / Virtuoso run and run and run and use lots of
resources, so I turn them off. Nepomuk uses 3G of data storage, KMail
nearly 2G for my IMAP folders that I never told it to download.
/var/tmp/kdecache folders also have gigabytes of data in them, until
/var runs full. Dragging a favicon from Konqueror to the desktop creates
a shortcut, but with a stupid name than cannot be edited. Online banking
with Konqueror is no good, I get warnings about untrusted certificates.
When the screen is locked, the screensaver runs and you press a key, you
can see the desktop for a little while before it is blanked and you get
the password dialog. Under heavy load, you have several seconds of time
to look what the user who locked its deskto does. Better not start Games
that change the resolution, this also might mess up your desktop. And
some more which I forgot. And that's only the bugs _I_ experience.

I think I will wait for 4.7 an

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:36:06 +0200 as excerpted:
> > Duncan writes:
> >> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:20:50 +0200 as excerpted:

> >> Or if akregator could close the browser pane and only show the feed
> >> tree and "headers pane", with clicking on a header loading the full
> >> article in the configured browser.
> > 
> > Did you file a feature request?
> 
> No.  At first things were moving well and I figured it would improve over
> time, anyway.

I waited for over a year until I started filing the first KDE4 bug. There 
were so many, and I thought filing them would not be necessary, as the KDE 
developers just have to start the applications for themselves and then 
they'll see. But many bugs did not get fixed, and finally I started to 
report them, if no-one else does. And some actually got fixed.

> Then kdepim, including akregator, was "stuck" waiting for
> akonadified kmail.
> 
> Now it's unstuck, but I'll wait to see where kdepim 4.7 (presuming it
> syncs with the rest of kde's cycle some time during 4.7) goes, since 4.6
> was pretty much focused on just getting kmail2 working and out the door.
> After I see what changes, if any, akregator and kmail 4.7 brings, I'll
> see about feature requests.

I'm also waiting for 4.7. And I hope that some things get more stable. At 
this moment, I am so close before dropping KDE4, I'm already looking for 
cool alternatives, but my little experience with Enlightemnent (0.17) was 
not so good either. But today I wasted about three hours until I was able to 
log into KDE. I do not want a desktop environment that every once in a while 
refuses to start, messes up my desktop, that I have to log out from every 
two days because of kwin running havoc, that uses too much CPU resources for 
X or the akonadi processes (right at this very moment: akonadiserver 51%, X 
27%, akondi_imap_re 25%, kontact 18%, kwin 14%, plasma-desktop 8%). The 
Akonadi stuff does not use this much resources all the time of course, 
averaged over ten minutes it is only 5% for kontact and 4% for 
akonadiserver. But it is noticeable often. Then there's kded4 and knotify4, 
I often have two of those processes running and eating all CPU time until I 
kill them, this happens on another KDE4 desktop, too. Oh, and plasma, it 
often hangs, or crashes, forgets its settings. Two years ago I already 
noticed most of these problems, but I though I'd wait a little for tings to 
go stable. But this didn't happen.

> ... Or just start trying other solutions, I don't know which...
> 
> > I like [akregator] the way it is, although the
> > browser engine is not that good, probably because it uses Konqueror.
> 
> Actually, I think it might use qt-webkit, tho I'm not sure.  Whatever it
> is, it seems to do fine for text content only, but either by design or
> due to bugs, it ignores images, here.  I think it's a bit confused as to
> what it actually wants the internal browser to be/do, whether it wants it
> to be a text summary only, or whether it wants to be a real browser.

I did not use webkit yet because I simply did not know how, the settings 
dialog in Konqueror only showed KTHML. But browsing through the package 
database I found kde-misc/kwebkitpart, and after installing I have the 
webkit option.

Akregator seems to honor it. When Konqueror is set to use webkit, I can 
watch embedded youtube videos in Akregator that only show up as black boxes 
otherwise.
While this is cool, there's a drawback of course: When plain images are 
displayed (like when downloading then via the KDE-Look RSS feed), I 
sometimes cannot save them, the menu has no entry for that. Hmm, I cannot 
reproduce it now. But I see another effect, with KTHML a link opens in 
another tab as I want it, with webkit it tries to start Firefox.

> Really, I think the problem with akregator is that it got ported to kde4
> and they got the basics working, then its devs either ended up retasked
> to help with the big kmail akonadi switch or moved on to other things,
> perhaps permanently, and akregator has been in basic maintenance mode
> only, since then.
> 
> Really, I think what akregator needs most is a dev or two just paying it
> some real attention for a couple development cycles, to get it past the
> "just barely ported to kde4 and got working" feel it has ATM.  That would
> probably solve some of the UI issues within a couple 6-month cycles,
> including the present inflexibility of the layout, the sort of broken
> combined-view-mode functionality, AND the internal viewer/browser's
> confusion on whether it wants to be a quick text-mode summary viewer
> only, or a real browser.  I may be wrong here, but particularly with

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Thursday, 2011-07-07, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Sometimes I get notifications like this from my IMAP server:
> > : Saving failed, server replied: A015537 BAD Invalid system
> > flag \RECENT.
> 
> Following up on this in particular.
> Seems this is caused by the IMAP resource trying to write the flag \RECENT
> back to the IMAP server, however this is considered a read only flag.
> Some IMAP servers seem to just ignore that, your's obviously complains.
> 
> We will try to fix this (filtering the flag out before writing to the
> server). Just out of curiosity, which IMAP server is that?

It's dovecot 2.0.13.

Thanks,

Wonko
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[kde] Re: lost Desktop

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:47:36 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> But you can easily recreate the folder plasmoid. Click the cashew on the
>> very top right of your screen (unlock the widgets before if you do not
>> see it), and select the first menu entry. Something like 'Add
>> mini-programs'. You will get a list of available plasmoids no the bottom
>> of the screen, look for the folder plasmoid (I guess it's called like
>> that). Drag it to the desktop. It probably already shows your desktop
>> folder. If not, open its settings by clicking the monkey wrench symbol
>> on the handle that appears when you are over the plasmoid, there you can
>> select the directory. BTW, I like to have several of those folder
>> plasmoids, pointing to different directories.
> 
> I know you're translating here, but I do find the literal translations 
> you used both enlightening and entertaining, knowing the English words 
> used. =:^)

I'm glad you have fun :-)

> FWIW, one of my akregator feeds is language log, because I
> find how people use (and misuse) words an interesting topic.  They run a 
> couple posts a day, generally 7 days a week, so it's not too high 
> traffic, just nice and steady daily food for contemplation.  The log is 
> in English but discusses language use (and myths about it) in many 
> different languages.  Some of the funniest posts are about "Chinglish" 
> mistranslations, but eggcorns and snowclones are languagelog coinages and 
> the use of language in legal scope gets its turn (and a number of the 
> professional linguists there have testified in court cases on the topic) 
> too, so it definitely has its serious side as well.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Log
> 
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish (That image of a "construction in 
> progress" sign illustrating the concept is a must see!)

Funnny :) I like the 'Spread to fuch the fruit' supermarket. Ugh, 'Fried
enema'.

> Anyway...
> 
> "Add widgets".  
> 
> You got "unlock widgets", but not "add widgets", which you translated as 
> "add mini-programs".  Are different terms used for those two in German, 
> which I believe I saw you mention you were translating from?  If so, it'd 
> be interesting to see what the literal translation of unlock widgets is, 
> for contrast. 

No, it's always 'Miniprogramme', mini programs. I think I remembered
'unlock widgets' from a posting here so I used that. And I was in a
little hurry, so I didn't think for too long about this.

> It's the "Folderview" plasmoid.
> 
> And... "monkey wrench"... not wrong at all, but I found the addition of 
> "monkey" interesting.

I learnt this the hard way.

I was stuck playing Monkey Island, the waterfall blocked my way. There
was a pump near which seemEd to control it, but I was unable to operate
it without the proper tool. Of course I already did USE BANANA ON
METRONOME, so the piano-playing monkey got hypnotized and I could stuff
him into my pocket, but it didn't occur to me I should USE MONKEY ON
PUMP, using him as wrench. It was years later when I read the
explanation. From then on I used 'monkey wrench' for 'Schraubenschlüssel'.

dict.leo.org suggests [screw] wrench or spanner. Or 'monkey wrench' for
'englischer Schraubenschlüssel'. Ah, 'der Engländer'! An adjustable
wrench. Oh, and there even is 'crescent wrench' for 'Swiss spanner'.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:20:50 +0200 as excerpted:
> > Oh, these newsticker applets. The KDE4 one didn't do anything when I
> > tried (a long time ago), but I don't like them anyway, they tend to
> > distract me.
> 
> I got used to it after awhile...
> 
> But I had forgotten that kde4 even /had/ a knewsticker for awhile, then
> it simply went away at some update or another.

I still have the 'News' plasmoid. Just tried it again, it says 'Fetching the 
news feed failed'. I tried to add another feed that is working in Akregator, 
same result. So, two years after I tried it for the first time, it still 
does the same, nothing. What a surprise.
[hours later]
Oh, now there are news items. The error message is still on the top, but 
some news items have appeared, although not those I added manually. But this 
was just a test, I prefer Akregator anyway.
[next login, due to KDE problems of course]
Again, no entries.
[later]
Entries are back. But they are old. The interval is set to 30 minutes, but 
one feed shows news of yesterday only.

Even the scrollbar does not work correctly. When I press the up or down 
arrows, it scrolls right to the top or bottom. When I click on the bar 
itself, it scrolls to this position. Like what the middle button should do. 
Sometimes it keeps scrolling even if I do not press any mouse button. And so 
on. An example for a plasmoid that either should not have these bugs, or 
that should not exist at all, it only make trouble, and is of no use. There 
should at lest be a warning dialog that it is not ready for use yet and one 
should try it on his own risk.


> Anyway, I know it was a bit dated as it only did rss and not atom feeds,
> and there wasn't really a way to show anything but headlines (tho that
> could in theory be arranged, a multi-line panel with the headline and say
> the first 3-5 lines of story below), but I'd have certainly enjoyed an
> updated newsticker than could handle atom, even if it only did
> headlines...
> 
> Or if akregator could close the browser pane and only show the feed tree
> and "headers pane", with clicking on a header loading the full article in
> the configured browser.

Did you file a feature request? I like it the way it is, although the 
browser engine is not that good, probably because it uses Konqueror. So I 
configured Akregator to use Firefox as external browser.
Firefox also has RSS capabilities, which I did not try, maybe this would 
work better. I like Konqueror more, its look&feel, but it has more problems 
than Firefox. I think that some day I will have to make the switch to 
Firefox like you already did.l

> Or if combined mode (which is sort of headers mode with a summary, too)
> had a selection indicator for the active entry, and a way to mark
> individual articles read and to multi-select ranges and mark them read if
> desired, much as one can headers in the header pane of kmail, for
> instance.
> 
> But I miss the filters, too, especially as I try to make my feed-reading
> time more efficient.  There's a LOT of stories I'd filter if only I
> could, while keeping those feeds.

Okay, my setup is less optimized. I have about 40 feeds, only few of them 
update daily, and I just advance from article to article.

> So as I said, akregator just seems klunky and undeveloped.  It's lacking
> the basic features like pane management and filtering/scoring that any
> basic article reading app really needs, whether it be news, mail, or
> feeds.  (I'm not a major IRC/IM user so I don't know if it could fit in
> that class or not, but certainly the others do.)  The lack of these
> features only serve to accentuate how well they work where they're
> present.

Using feeds is relatively new to me, I didn't even know other readers have 
these features. Maybe that's why I don't miss them.

> (FWIW, kmail isn't perfect here either.  If I had my way, I'd have it's
> tri-pane layout arranged much like I do pan's, full width headers at the
> top so I can get all the usual columns and a reasonable width subject/
> title without horizontal scrolling, folder tree and body pane below, with
> the folder tree actually to the right instead of the left, as to a
> western left to right, top to bottom reader, the lower right is the low-
> focus corner, and I spend far less times changing folders or newsgroups
> than I do reading headers or their full messages, so the folder list
> works real well there.  But kmail's pane layout isn't as flexible as
> pan's and while it has a short folder list option, it places it beside
> the header pane which is the one that needs the extra width in the first
> place, so there's little point!  There's no o

[kde] Re: lost Desktop

[Alex Schuster]

Jerome Yuzyk writes:

> On Wednesday, July 13, 2011 01:07:31 PM Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net>
> wrote:

> It was a plasmoid, whatever replaced the pre-KDE4 Desktop, but didn't
> cover the whole Desktop surface. Problem is, it's not on the Panel
> anymore since I had to restart Plasma so I don't know where to drop it
> from.

Strange, I don't see why it should have disappeared from the panel.

> I run my Panel vertically on the left of the screen. One day I noticed he
> Desktop area had what looked like a scrollbar on the left side it so I
> tried it but I guess I inadvertently dragged whatever I thought was the
> scrollbar enough onto the Panel that it iconified there. Then when I tried
> to use the icon to put things back Plasma went into a 100% CPU spin and I
> had to kill and restart it and neither the icon nor my Desktop came back.

The joy of KDE4 plasma
But you can easily recreate the folder plasmoid. Click the cashew on the 
very top right of your screen (unlock the widgets before if you do not see 
it), and select the first menu entry. Something like 'Add mini-programs'. 
You will get a list of available plasmoids no the bottom of the screen, look 
for the folder plasmoid (I guess it's called like that). Drag it to the 
desktop. It probably already shows your desktop folder. If not, open its 
settings by clicking the monkey wrench symbol on the handle that appears 
when you are over the plasmoid, there you can select the directory. BTW, I 
like to have several of those folder plasmoids, pointing to different 
directories.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: lost Desktop

[Alex Schuster]

Jerome Yuzyk writes:

> On Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:10:22 PM Alex Schuster  
> wrote:
>> Jerome Yuzyk writes:
>>> Yesterday I inadvertently moved my Desktop to the Panel.
>>
>> Uh, um, how did you do _that_?

> There was a bar on it that I thought was a scrollbar. When I went to scroll 
> it the Desktop iconified onto the Panel. ~/home/Desktop isn't gone - it 
> just doesn't show anymore.

Ah, now I understand. It's the folder plasmoid showing your desktop
folder. Click on the cashew, the thing on the very very right of your
panel. If it isn't there, you probably have to unlock your widgets
first, do this by right-clicking on the desktop and select 'unlock
widgets'. Or something like that, I'm translating from German.

When you clicked the cashew, you can drag things from your panel back to
the desktop.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: lost Desktop

[Alex Schuster]

Jerome Yuzyk writes:

> Yesterday I inadvertently moved my Desktop to the Panel.

Uh, um, how did you do _that_?

> In trying to move it back, Plasma went into a spin so I killed and
> restarted it. Now how do I get it back?

Do you by any chance have a backup of your
.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc file? I guess restoring that
would do the trick. Or maybe removing it, although you'd have to
configure your desktop again.

I back up this stuff regularly, and always before I save the desktop
session, as I had all sorts of trouble in the past.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> It's not an Akonadi problem, this started right with KDE 4.6.5. It's a
> GUI problem, the little KNotes icon in the system tray simply no longer
> reacts to left mouse clicks.
> 
> > Same goes for Klipper. I found this out when I wanted to view the
[...]
> Sorry I wasn't clear about that. Klipper is working fine, but I cannot
> access it by clicking its icon in the system tray.

This is also working now.
I also notice that yesterday all of the systemtray's entries were shown all 
the time, while now it is again as it used to be, some (like KWallet, KGPG 
and some more) only show up when I click the little arrow at the right.

The day started bad, but things are fixing themselves now.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> And then I logged out, mainly because kwin was using 500M of memory, and
> usually weird things start happening then.
> 
> When logging in, KDE did not come up. The splash screen stayed for
> longer than normal, then the screen went black, and stayed like this.
> Going black is normal, KDE takes about three minutes here until
> everything is started (plasma-desktop is using all the CPU during this
> time), but now it never finishes. I let it run for a couple of hours
> this night, then I killed plasma-desktop, and finally the desktop came
> up. I started plasma-desktop in a Konsole, but it still only eats CPU
> time.
> 
> Time for testing with other users, old configs, bisecting... again.
> 
> And about KMail... it does not show _any_ mail any more. In the folder
> view, I see folders with unread messages, but those were still unread
> when I logged out of KDE. It does not scan for new mails. An when I
> select any folder, it does not show the contents, it just says it's
> fetching the contents, and I should wait.
> 
> This is a bad morning. No Plasma (meaning also no panel, no system
> tray), no KMail. And Thunderbird has a weird problem, it does not check
> folders for new mails. I should do some work, but I guess I will spend
> some time making my desktop work again. 

And then I simply copied back my .kde4/share/config directory I had backed 
up before yesterday evening's Akonadi changes, and suddenly ALL IS WORKING! 
Plasma is starting again, KMail shows my mails, and I can even send mails 
now.

Okay, I still get the 'Could not create collection' notification. And one 
KMail folder just got me this notification:
  : Saving failed, server replied: A001605 BAD Invalid system flag
  \RECENT

In the Akonadi settings, I can choose between Mysql and PostgreSQL, neither 
is set (it was set to Mysql before). Below, I see no longer the path tho the 
mysql binary, but settings for an external PostgreSQL server.

I'm glad things started working again, I have a usable desktop, and I can 
see and send mails. Now I will check for the Trash, and maybe delete and re-
create some resources. Time for another backup before I do this.

Wonko

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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:09:32 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> Duncan writes:

>> I only used KMail for a long time, but then I gave Akregator a try, and
>> I liked it. And so I thought why not, and started using the whole
>> Kontact suite.
> 
> FWIW, akregator still feels a bit kludgy (hey, "kludgy" would make a nice 
> kde app! =:^) to me.  I preferred the knewsticker kicker applet that was 
> part of kde3.

Oh, these newsticker applets. The KDE4 one didn't do anything when I
tried (a long time ago), but I don't like them anyway, they tend to
distract me.


> But when I read mail I read mail.  When I read news, I read news (FWIW 
> using pan to do it, not kde's knode).  And when I read feeds, I read 
> feeds.  I don't have any desire to unify them in some way, for the same 
> reason I rarely view the combined feed list instead of tech/linux news vs 
> other.  If I'm thinking about Linux and reading Linux/tech feeds, I don't 
> want to be off-tracked by the latest about Obama or the debt talks, tho I 
> value that too and follow it separately.  But the key is just that, 
> /separately/.  Having mail from my family, or from my voicemail service, 
> while valuable in themselves, intrude on my Linux concentration, would be 
> even worse!   So keeping the apps separate is just fine by me; no kontact 
> necessary!

Hmm, I'd say with Kontact things are more separated for than they were
before, when I had a mail window, and some browser windows (showing
things I now read in Akregator), on the same screen. Now Kontact shows
me either, and I have to switch between the sub-applications, so it's
either mail, or usenet, or feeds (along with some open tabs in Akregator
for messages I want to have a deeper look at). BTW, since 4.6.5,
Akregator saves the session / the open tabs, I was missing that before.


[KDE4's Amarok]
> So I split, and as with every case where that has happened to me, I'm 
> glad I did, only wishing, perhaps, that I had done so sooner, altho 
> recognizing as well that there comes a time when you are ready, and 
> trying it sooner would be rather counterproductive.  (In particular, 
> that's the way it was with MS, for me.  It took me two years after I'd 
> basically decided Linux was where I was headed, before I finally made the 
> switch.  Had I tried earlier, it would have likely been an abortive 
> attempt and I don't know if I'd have /ever/ made the switch.  That's why 
> I will certainly argue that Linux is the better way, but there's no way 
> I'd try to force people to switch before they're ready for it.)

I can under stand this. But I'm happy with it, because while being
entirely different, I like Amarok very very much. It still has some
bugs, it is slow, but it fits great into my desktop. I like that I can
change the layout, that I can arrange the views how I like, side by
side, one upon the other, or in tabs, saving space. I like the kontext
view with lyrics or Wikipedia stuff. Or searching my collection.

But it's not an improved version of the old Amarok, so for sure many
people are disappointed. Well, like KDE 4 is very different from KDE 3.5.


> akonadiconsole seems to be the newer, more powerful alternative, and it 
> DOES support sqlite at least to some degree (I see it in the DB Browser 
> tab, for instance) but opens with a warning that it's a development tool 
> only, use is at your own risk!  And for sure, the stuff it shows looks 
> scary enough and I know little enough about it that I'd be scared to 
> touch much of anything therein, without direct instructions from someone 
> who knew more about it than I do!

I already used it a couple of times, yes, it's scary. I like the 'Do not
even think about changing anything in here!' notice :)

[After switching to QSQLITE3]
>> I get a notification every few minutes: ': Unknown error. (Could
>> not create collection).'
>>
>> And I had a 'KMail-Folder' before, which was the content of my local
>> .kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail directory. This is gone. There is a 'Local
>> Folders' resource pointing to that directory, which I already had
>> before, but it only shows the usual folders (Drafts, Inbox, Outbox,
>> Sent, Templates). I'm missing the Trash, no idea why that is gone, I
>> think this already was the case since the KDEPIM upgrade. Deleting to
>> trash still works though, I wonder where these messages are. BTW,
>> deleting via shortcut now also works, it didn't before.
>> I added a new 'mail' resource, selected the mail directory (it would be
>> nice if one could use the directory selection dialog to browse this,

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:33:56 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> A little update on the KDEPIM situation. Kontact sort of works now, but
>> it feels slower than before. Even changing between Kontact's different
>> modules is slower now. I think about not using Kontact at all, but its
>> individual components, with their windows grouped together (a really
>> cool feature of KDE4 which I often use). Well, it's not _really_ bad,
>> switching takes 1-2 seconds, but it used to be instantaneous before, and
>> I like to quickly peek into Akregator and back to see if there are new
>> messages.
> 
> FWIW, I use neither grouped windows (which don't seem to work with my 
> chosen window decoration, kde2)

Ik :)

> nor kontact.  I don't use knode or 
> korganizer at all (along with kontact, not installed at all, except that 
> korganizer is a gentoo dep of kmail, as covered earlier in the 
> discussion, so it's installed), tho I do use kmail and akregator... but 
> as separate apps, generally opening the one I want from its tray icon.

I only used KMail for a long time, but then I gave Akregator a try, and
I liked it. And so I thought why not, and started using the whole
Kontact suite.


>> What I liked about the old KMail was that I could open folders in tabs.
>> The problem with this was that folders opened in tabs did not get
>> checked for new mail, I hoped this would be fixed. But it seems this
>> feature is gone now.
> 
> The feature "isn't dead, just resting!" =:^)  Really.  Unlike the parrot, 
> you can wake this one up (or resurrect it, if you prefer! =:^).
> 
> I didn't initially see the tabs either, and might have concluded they 
> were gone, but remember, the initial version of the new kmail was 
> designed to be very close to feature parity with the old one, no fancy 
> new features yet, just something very similar to the old one, but 
> akonadified.  And tabs are a big enough deal to some that I couldn't 
> imagine them trying to bill a no-tabs version as feature parity.
> 
> The answer, at least here, is to remember that in the conversion, some of 
> the config might have been lost, too, and in this case, apparently was.  
> I had the tab-bar set to always show, previously, and when you mentioned 
> it and verified I didn't see it, I decided to check kmail settings.  Sure 
> enough, I found the option I was looking for there in short order.  As I 
> expected, it's under the appearance icon.  Look on the message list tab, 
> second option down under General.
> 
> There it was, "hide tab bar when only one tab is open" was checked.  
> After unchecking it and hitting apply, the old and familiar tab bar was 
> visible once again, complete with the new-tab icon on the left and the 
> close-tab icon on the right.

Thanks! Good thing this feature wasn't dropped.

> But as I said I don't do IMAP, so haven't the foggiest if the tabs work 
> with it, tho I don't see why they wouldn't.

I just tried, and heyy, my bug is gone! I opened my inbox and another
tab, sent me a mail, and it appeared in the tabbed inbox. This did not
work with the old KMail, so while it was nice to have multiple folders
opened in tabs, I had to close tabbed  folder before I could see new
mails in it.

But still something seems wrong. When I send the mail, I get an instant
notification that a mail has successfully been sent, and few seconds
later I get another notification about the new mail in my inbox. But
KMail does not show it yet. Looks like Akonadi checks for mail often, or
even gets notified by the IMAP server about it, but KMail has to check
the Akonadi resource for itself, which it does every few minutes. Does
this make sense? Would be nice if Akonadi would inform KMail about new
mails.


>> Seems like KMail does not know about any of my contacts.
>> I do not understand at all how this works. I still have the contacts in
>> my address book, so the migration has worked for them, but when  I open
>> the settings, they show the location as ~/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/stdvcf,
>> and this directory is empty. So all this stuff is in Akonadi's mysql
>> database now? What's the purpose of this empty directory?
> 
> mysql?  That could well be your problem, both here and for some of the 
> others.  But there's other alternatives.  See below.
> 
>> Today I unsubscribed from the ubuntu-users list which I do not read
>> anyway, and because of the 250M this folder takes on the IMAP server, I
>> decided to delete it. I also wanted to verify if bug 239859 still
>> happens, KMail used to crash when deleting IMAP folders while still
&g

[kde] Re: disable fx prior to first 4.6 startups

[Alex Schuster]

Felix Miata writes:

> On 2011/07/07 22:54 (GMT+0200) Alex Schuster composed:

> > Try Alt+Shift+F12, this toggles the desktop effects. I use it on a PC
> > (not
> 
> Another hotkey combination I'll probably forget as fast as I discovered
> it, or at least not remember when I need to.

I know it well, because I get notifications frequently that my system is too 
slow and that the desktops effects are being suspended. This notification 
also mentions how to toggle the effects back via this key combination.

I have a dual core AMD 4850e CPU with 2.5 GHz, and on-board Radeon HD3200 
video (using the open-source radeon driver). Which seems to be barely enough 
to run KDE4 (using six desktops and running much stuff I must admit). top 
gives these values, sampled over two minutes:

  27% X
  16% kwin
  13% plasma-desktop
   5% amarok
   5% dbus-daemon
   3% udisks-daemon
   3% akonadi_imap_re
   3% akonadiserver
   3% mysqld
   2% kget
   2% knotify4


> > You can also edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc, and set Enabled=false in
> > the [Compositing] section.
> 
> That would not be a global fix. That file doesn't even exist on a new
> install until after KDE gets started, and then only for each individual's
> first login.

Right, I just mentioned it as yet another way to turn it off. Now let's both 
forget about it, as Stephen provided a much better solution.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: disable fx prior to first 4.6 startups

[Alex Schuster]

Stephen Dowdy writes:

> I prefer to state modifications to config files in terms of
> k{read,write}config statements, as these should work regardless of the
> distro (i think).  This should make it easier for end-users to get the
> desired effect w/o having to hunt around or try to figure out why a
> section/key/file don't exist. Just Cut/Paste and voila' (crossing
> fingers...)
[...]
> kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false

Cool, I did not know about these commands. Nice to know.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: disable fx prior to first 4.6 startups

[Alex Schuster]

Am Donnerstag, 7. Juli 2011, 16:44:59 schrieb Felix Miata:

> I've done several new installations lately, openSUSE 11.4 and Kubuntu
> 11.04, all on i865G video, in each case doing system updates (to e.g.
> 4.6.4) prior to first X start. All have been very difficult to get into
> anything after starting X, including systemsettings to turn off the
> broken desktop FX. Phantom windows come and go, including main menu &
> panel & clock settings, How on further i865G installations can I
> configure a system globally to disable desktop FX by default? Will it be
> the same for 4.7?

I'm not sure if I understand this right... so the active desktop effects 
mess up everything, and it is even hard to start systemsettings and turn 
them off?

Try Alt+Shift+F12, this toggles the desktop effects. I use it on a PC (not 
my own desktop, at least one problem that _I_ do not run into) where all 
plasma stuff is just black, including the panel, so I cannot open the K menu 
or call krunner. This happened after the upgrade from 4.6.2 to to 4.6.3, 
4.6.4 is not installed there yet. Could also be the X.org update that 
happened along the KDE update.
You can also edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc, and set Enabled=false in the 
[Compositing] section.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

A little update on the KDEPIM situation. Kontact sort of works now, but it 
feels slower than before. Even changing between Kontact's different modules 
is slower now. I think about not using Kontact at all, but its individual 
components, with their windows grouped together (a really cool feature of 
KDE4 which I often use). Well, it's not _really_ bad, switching takes 1-2 
seconds, but it used to be instantaneous before, and I like to quickly peek 
into Akregator and back to see if there are new messages.

Kontact's summary shows an over-due to-do item, but when I click on it, the 
to-do list is empty. Probably a migration problem, but why does it show up 
in the summary then? But I did not use this feature much, so I don't care 
about the lost entries.

Quite often an IMAP folder still shows unread mails when I already had read 
them all. Selecting another folder and again the one with the unread mails 
usually fixes this.

What I liked about the old KMail was that I could open folders in tabs. The 
problem with this was that folders opened in tabs did not get checked for 
new mail, I hoped this would be fixed. But it seems this feature is gone 
now.

I wanted to see if distribution lists work with the new Kontact - they did 
not with the old one, a mail to TESTGROUP would not go to the email 
addresses of this group's members, but TESTGROUP@myserver.mydomain. But when 
I open the address book and enter a new group, the new KMail does not know 
about this group and will not autocomplete. Seems like KMail does not know 
about any of my contacts. 
I do not understand at all how this works. I still have the contacts in my 
address book, so the migration has worked for them, but when  I open the 
settings, they show the location as ~/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/stdvcf, and this 
directory is empty. So all this stuff is in Akonadi's mysql database now? 
What's the purpose of this empty directory?

When moving messages from my inbox to another folder, they often (but not 
always) still show up, but grayed out. I already know this behavior from 
some other mail clients I tried, except for the old KMail and Thunderbird, 
it can be fixed by logging into my IMAP server and running mutt. When 
quitting, I am asked whether to purge the deletes messages. I wonder what I 
could do if I had not shell access to the server.

Today I unsubscribed from the ubuntu-users list which I do not read anyway, 
and because of the 250M this folder takes on the IMAP server, I decided to 
delete it. I also wanted to verify if bug 239859 still happens, KMail used 
to crash when deleting IMAP folders while still having it open.

Well, what do you think happened? Right, Kontact took ages deleting this, 
became unresponsive, after half an hour I killed the process. 
akonadi_imap_re still was quite busy. When starting Kontact again, a 
composing window with an unfinished mail opened, but not the main window. So 
I killed Kontact again. I stopped the Akonadi server, restarted it, and now 
Kontact was working again.
Again, I tried to delete the huge mailing list folder, and this time I 
waited for about two hours. Kontact was still usable, but very slow, and the 
KMail part did not display mails. akonadi_imap_re used about 40% of CPU 
resources, having an accumulated total time of an hour now. This process 
uses a lot of CPU resources even when I do nothing with Kontact, same goes 
for mysql.

Finally, I got an error message, the folder could not be deleted. So I 
deleted it with Thunderbird, which did the job in seconds. KMail still 
showed the folder and its contents, but after a restart it is finally gone.

Sometimes I get notifications like this from my IMAP server:
: Saving failed, server replied: A015537 BAD Invalid system flag 
\RECENT. This just happened when changing into a folder that has a new mail. 
This morning, I had some similar message, but it told me about some 
conflicting flags on the IMAP server, and asked whether to keep version A, 
version B or both. I was in a hurry so I did not notice what the problem was 
exactly. I think I kept both.

Now, when I select this folder again, I get this message, every time:

: Remote id is empty or invalid.

And the folder has no entries. Restarting KMail and Akonadi does not help. 
At least I can still view it with Thunderbird.

Oh, and after this last restart, the folder view shows one unread mail in 
the drafts folder. When I select this folder, there is only one mail, grayed 
out, it's the former draft of this mail I am just composing now. There are 
other drafts, but they only show up in Thunderbird, not in KMail.

I logged out and in, and now my drafts are back. The other folder is still 
empty, but I do no longer get the 'Remote id is empty or invalid' when 
selecting it.

Wow, this became longer than I thought. Now I just read that KDEPIM 4.6.1 
has been released, let's see if this will improve things, I guess Gentoo 
will have it soon. If not, I will delete my account and re-create 

[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Monday, 2011-07-04, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Kevin Krammer writes:
> > > On Saturday, 2011-07-02, Alex Schuster wrote:

> > > Hmm, using KDE localized for German myself I can't really agree
> > > with this. Do you have an example of something not being translated
> > > properly?
> > 
> > Sorry, no. Since 4.6.3, nearly all my KDE applications suddenly are in
> > English. An exception is systemsettings, although the applications in
> > it are English again. The K menu also has German entries, and the KDE
> > Help Center has most stuff in German. Must be some bug because
> > kde-l10n is installed, and German is set as application language in
> > the help menu. I don't care much, let's wait and see if 4.7 will
> > correct this.
> > 
> > Before 4.6.3, most things were German, but sometimes dialogs were not.
[...]
> Since Debian packages seem to work just fine it could be either a
> packaging or configuration issue. Does this happen for all user accounts?
> Also new ones?

Yes, I just created a new user and verified this. BTW, this user is unable 
to log out - when I try to, the background gets greyed out, but then nothing 
happens. The desktop is still usable, except for the logout feature. 

Now I looked at the files installed by the kde-base/kde-l10n package. I 
expected *.qm files, but instead the translation is done by *.mo files in 
/usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES. Ah! So I checked my $LC_MESSAGES variable, 
and it was set to 'C'. My fault, obviously. I corrected this, and 
everything's in German now! Well, nearly everything, but I'm impressed. Most 
stuff in Systemsettings is still in English, but when I check applications 
like Konsole, Konqueror, Dolphin, Gwenview, all is translated.

I just stumbled upon http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable-kde4/team/ on 
Planet KDE. Now that's a LOT of languages.

BTW, after logging out and in again to apply the LC_MESSAGES changes, I ran 
into bug #266129 (knode displays **HUGE** icons), but I could solve this 
easily again. Strange, I have no idea what could have triggered this, I just 
had logged in not long before and did not change any settings.


> > I have never used WLAN with Linux before, and I hoped that it would
> > automagically work.
> 
> It usually does. My laptop has had its fair share of unencrypted, WEP, WPA
> and even one WPA-PSK networks, all quite simple through network manager.
> Occasionally even mobile broadband (though I prefer PPP tools there for
> fine tuning some options).
> 
> > The interfaces came up, but when I tried to connect, I
> > was asked for the WEP password. Some notice that my WLAN drivers were
> > not capable of WPA would have been nice, I did not know what was the
> > problem. Or a list of the interfaces capabilities.
> > I still do not understand why a PCMCIA card did not work, that worked
> > out of the box with an earlier Ubuntu Version. After I flashed the
> > internal card, WPA suddenly worked.
> 
> Ah, I have a nicely supported integrated Intel Wireless 3945. Might be
> different with plug&play hardware.

After flashing the device, WPA was not problem any more. But I had a hard 
time to find out what to do. I found several howtos for Ubuntu or openSUSE 
(which I also gave a short try before), but none really explained what 
needed to be done. People just gave a summary what _they_ had to do in their 
specific case, but not what the basic concepts are. Maybe I should have 
tried the Gentoo docs instead, they are of good quality often and focus on 
the technical details. Or find some other basic documentation. But then I 
just wanted to do a quick install, and I wouldn't have bothered to flash the 
internal card if the PCMCIA card were working. Which it did, with an older 
Ubuntu. I even thought about just installing that again, but then I did not 
like to do yet another install again.


> > But the interface often does not come up after resuming from suspend
> > to RAM or disk. Sometimes the connection also drops during normal
> > usage. I get a notification that the interface is down, but
> > NetworkManager still shows it as up. I have to manually disconnect
> > and then connect again.
> 
> Ah, strange.
> I have seen drops but then the interface was really gone on all levels.
> Reconnect after resume (from standby) works every single day (my laptop
> suspends to RAM every evening and is resumed every morning).

For me it works only 50%, and I tried a lot of times.

> > I also did not find a
> > quick way to turn it off altogether, I would prefer the interface to
> > be up all the time, even if no one is logged in.
> 
> Permanent connections can usually be configured by whatever sys

[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Saturday, 2011-07-02, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > BTW, ordinary users here means people who often do not speak English.
> > The German localization misses a lot, so KDE 4 is not right for them.
> > Is KDE 4 meant to be for these people? I'm not sure.
> 
> Hmm, using KDE localized for German myself I can't really agree with this.
> Do you have an example of something not being translated properly?

Sorry, no. Since 4.6.3, nearly all my KDE applications suddenly are in 
English. An exception is systemsettings, although the applications in it are 
English again. The K menu also has German entries, and the KDE Help Center 
has most stuff in German. Must be some bug because kde-l10n is installed, 
and German is set as application language in the help menu. I don't care 
much, let's wait and see if 4.7 will correct this.

Before 4.6.3, most things were German, but sometimes dialogs were not. But 
no, I can't remember any specific ones.

> Do by any chance run something Ubuntu based and using their language
> packages?

No, Gentoo.

> > BTW, who actually does the coding for KDE 4? How many of those people
> > are being payed for this, how many just do this for fun in their free
> > time?
> 
> I don't think there is any significant number of developers currently
> being paid to work on KDE.
> IIRC Aaron Seigo is, David Faure is 50%, some of the people working on
> Calligra Office are.
> The Kontact Touch project was done as a contract work for a German
> covernmental entity, but that has been delivered and there are currently
> no follow-up contracts as far as I know.
> 
> Canonical might have somebody working on KDE stuff as well.

Thanks. I thought it were some more. So, despite my constant ranting about 
the bad quality of KDE4, it's astonishing what a group of mostly unpaid 
volunteers can accomplish. This is a huge project, and it is quite cool. If 
only the stability were better.

> > Gnome works fine, but I did not use much of it. Networkmanager is a
> > pain, and I had a hard time setting up WLAN. This was not very user
> > friendly.
> 
> Interesting, I always found NetworkManager to be quite easy, at least when
> the WLAN is broadcasting its ESSID (which most of them do).
> Mostly using WPA though, had to experiment a bit when doing WPA-PSK, but
> work also from UI (i.e. no file editing required).

I have never used WLAN with Linux before, and I hoped that it would 
automagically work. The interfaces came up, but when I tried to connect, I 
was asked for the WEP password. Some notice that my WLAN drivers were not 
capable of WPA would have been nice, I did not know what was the problem. Or 
a list of the interfaces capabilities.
I still do not understand why a PCMCIA card did not work, that worked out of 
the box with an earlier Ubuntu Version. After I flashed the internal card, 
WPA suddenly worked.

But the interface often does not come up after resuming from suspend to RAM 
or disk. Sometimes the connection also drops during normal usage. I get a 
notification that the interface is down, but NetworkManager still shows it 
as up. I have to manually disconnect and then connect again. Should be no 
big deal, but this is my Mom's notebook, she's 61 years old and has no 
experience with computers. She does not understand why she has to disconnect 
something that just told her in a notice that is has been disconnected.

But maybe I exaggerated a little, it's not _that_ bad. I have heard many bad 
things about it, maybe this biased my opinion. I also did not find a quick 
way to turn it off altogether, I would prefer the interface to be up all the 
time, even if no one is logged in. maybe this is a nice feature for moving 
laptops, but this one always connects to the same access point. I also did 
not like that I had to enter the password for, um, I guess it's the 
equivalent of KDE's wallet, but I was able to solve this by adding a PAM 
rule. The password still has to be entered after waking up from suspend, I 
didn't find a solution for this, but she can live with that.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Wednesday, 2011-06-29, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Kevin Krammer writes:
> > > On Tuesday, 2011-06-28, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > BTW, I have lots of resources named akonadi_ical_resource_0 to
> > akonadi_ical_resource_20 (only number 19 is missing), all with no file
> > name selected.
> 
> You can delete those (kcmshell4 kcm_akonadi_resources or from KOrganizer),
> this is a hard to reproduce bug (timing related) when migrating
> calendars.

Thanks, I did so. Looks less cluttered now. There ares till some empty 
resources:
- Personal Calendar: No file selected
- Adressbuch: No KDE address book plugin configured yet.
- akonadi_kabc_resource_2: No KDE address book plugin configured yet.
- akonadi_kcal_resource_0: No KDE calendar plugin configured yet.

I guess I will just delete them. Never did much with the calendar, and the 
address book seems to work, although kmail does not use its entries for auto 
completion. But that's no problem, I just have not dealt with this yet.

Wonko
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[kde] Some more weeks of KDE4 usage (was: Re: A week of KDE4 usage)

[Alex Schuster]

On 2011-05-12, Rafa Grimán wrote:

> On Thursday 12 May 2011 00:27 Alex Schuster wrote
>> Rafa Griman wrote:

>>> So the thing is: have you tried another distro? Honestly, change
>>> distros and you'll see that KDE SC isn't as bad as you think.
>>
>> Nooo way, this won't happen :) Sorry, but I just love Gentoo Linux. I'd
>> rather give up KDE4 than using another distro for my personal purposes.
> 
> So, Gentoo. Also a Gentoo user :) Could it be the compile options you're 
> using? I know some people use very agressive compiler options and then the 
> system is quite unstable ...

I'm optimizing for my CPU, but don't use aggressive compile options,
it's only "-march=k8-sse3 -mfpmath=sse -O2 -pipe". Should be safe.

And I wouldn't say my system itself is unstable, I do not get weird
compile errors that aren't reproducible. Most of the time I can work
fine, when I do my usual stuff. Many of the bugs are already reported on
bugs.kde.org or can be reproduced by others.

The problems mostly happen when I try new things. Add some activities, play
around, delete them, and on the next reboot you have them again, or even
more. I'm not the only one with this bug.
Some versions ago, dragging a plasmoid from the panel to the desktop
would make plasma crash, reproducible.
About a third of the plasmoids I download and try do not work or make
plasma crash.

Since my initial posting, I noted most of the problems as they happened. Not 
all are KDE4 problems, but most of them. Here we go. Oh my! When I start 
marking the stuff I wrote in KNotes and scroll down, suddenly the whole 
marked text becomes bold, so I just found another bug while starting to 
write about the other bugs.


2011-05-16:
Problems with my dynamic IP that is managed by ZoneEdit.com. Main problem 
was on their side, but I had weird problems with their user interface which 
was Konqueror's fault. Probably the same bug that sends double requests, 
this also happens when filing bugs at bugs.kde.org, you get a conflict 
message then.

2011-05-17:
Konqueror does not show the login field for zoneedit.com any more. Did not 
know about the above problem yet so I use Konqueror again, not Firefox.

Some problem with my 'bgo' web shortcut in Konqueror for bugs.gentoo.org. 
Got a 'updating config' message in an endless loop, don't remember the 
details.

2011-05-18:
Akregator dies on a web site.

2011-05-19:
kwin is using 891M!

2011-05-21:
Konqueror asks for confirmation of certificates for my online banking. But 
no other browser does this.

2011-05-22:
Akregator: Crashes when clicking 2 URLs quickly.

2011-05-23:
Dolphin -> Settings -> Configure Dolphin -> Services -> Download New 
Services: desktop #5 is no longer accessible

2010-05-26:
Suddenly the mouse no longer reacts correctly. I restarted X, same effect. 
Reboot, all is fine again.

2010-05-28:
Some similar problem with the mouse, I don't remember what that was. 
restarted KDE, now some of my desktops are swapped ore gone. But I know what 
files to get from the backup to make it work again.

2010-05-28:
Konqueror crashes when accessing Webmail (I don't do this normally)

2011-05-27:
My USB-Stick is not being recognized, mounting by hand.

Wallet does not open

KSsnapshot -> Send To does not work, file not found error. have to save 
first. Known bug.

2011-05-29:
My test user is unable to log out. background gets greyed out, but desktop 
is still usable. Well, except for the logout feature.

kded4 process hogs CPU time. Sometimes then knotify4 does the same.

I installed the steampunk splash screen, but it is does not show up. 
Eventually worked after the next login or something.

kdesu asked for the password, I canceled. After this, I ALWAYS get the error 
'unable to authenticate/execute the action: code 4). I have to log out and 
in again to make kdesu work. Right after this PolicyKit1-KDE crashed.

Started Emilia-Pinball in fullscreen, it hangs, had to kill X.

2011-05-30:
Installed the new Simple CPU Usage plasmoid, played with the options, plasma 
crashed.

Konqueror does not scroll a web page

TV-Browser becomes invisible

2011-05-31:
Ran into bug #168865 from 2008, Akregator & Ctrl-C does not work.

Spell check: Skip uppercase does not work; Words with the German umlaut 'ß' 
are shown as wrong, same goes for words with an apostrophe.

2011-06-01:
kwin using 600M, Konqueror window has no border, Menus & Windows are gray or 
black -> restart KDE

KNode: compositing window -> Settings -> Configure Kontact opens KNode 
settings, not those for Kontact

2011-06-05:
Kontact crashed silently

2011-06-08:
kwin uses 1.3G, again weird effects happen. After relogin: Plasmoids are not 
movable, I have to lock and unlock them to do this. One plasmoid is in an 
unusual place.

2011-06-10:
/var file system is

[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

In May, Duncan wrote:

Sometimes it takes me a while until I answer your mails, they are so long :)

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 10 May 2011 01:49:49 +0200 as
> excerpted:
> 
>> [Oh, this has become rather lengthy. It's a description of my
>> various problems with KDE4, the details are not so important, no
>> need to read it all. My question is: Are your experiences similar
>> to mine?]
> 
> I read it all, because I'm interested in such things,

I knew :)

> but I snipped the list, as replying to all the individual items
> wasn't the point.

Right.


> With kde4 it has been made /very/ apparent that the kde devs simply
> aren't interested in creating a "just works" desktop for ordinary
> users, or even ordinary /power/ users.  If they were, they would NOT
> have insisted 4.2 was ready for ordinary users, when it /very/
> clearly was still alpha quality at best -- huge gaps of missing
> functionality, and bugs with the devs saying that's not implemented
> yet, so it's not as if they weren't /aware/ of the problem, what was
> there often broken, good as a technology preview, but not for use by
> people actually wanting to get stuff done. Yet they INSISTED it was
> ready for ordinary users!  And were they

BTW, ordinary users here means people who often do not speak English.
The German localization misses a lot, so KDE 4 is not right for them.
Is KDE 4 meant to be for these people? I'm not sure.

> interested in normal users, they'd have not dropped support for the
> stable kde3 at the same time, when kde4 clearly wasn't ready.

Yes, it's bad that KDE 3.5 is getting insecure and unsupported, while KDE
4 is not really stable yet. It would have been nice if some developers
had stayed and done bugfixes and maybe implemented new features that are
needed nowadays. I don't know who the trinity guys are and how far this
project has gone, but some day KDE4 will be stable, and there's not much
need for 3.5 any more.

BTW, who actually does the coding for KDE 4? How many of those people
are being payed for this, how many just do this for fun in their free
time? I totally understand that no one would like to be among those that
still develop for the old KDE 3.5, instead of implementing and using all
these cool new features. And I also understand that it's more fun to
implement new features than to make the existing things stable and
translate stuff.

> So it's quite clear that the kde folk would rather simply have people
> who just want things to work, move on to other desktop environments
> and quit bothering the kde folks.
> 
> Now, arguably (and I've repeatedly made this point myself so I
> obviously argue it to be so), by later 4.5, say 4.5.4 and 4.5.5, KDE
> (um... KDE-SC) had improved to the point that it was ready for what
> /should/ have been the official 4.0 release -- had it been aimed at
> ordinary users.  But again, it's NOT aimed at ordinary users any
> more.  So what they called 4.0, which they clearly labeled as
> developer-only, freezing the libraries but with a barely functional
> UI skeleton over top, really /WAS/ a .0 release IF YOU'RE TARGETING
> THE DEVELOPER AUDIENCE FOR WHOM A LIBRARY FREEZE IS SIGNIFICANT.
> 
> Looked at thru that filter, the filter of who their actual target
> audience is, now, all the rest begins to fall into place and make a
> WHOLE lot more sense!

Hmm, I guess the devs see things a little different, but you have a point.

[...]
> In a way, this evolution of KDE could be seen as taking that
> philosophy to the next level.  KDE will continue on, pressing into
> new territory, perhaps never really stabilizing things, but that's
> fine.  They're a "software collection" targeted at the developer that
> knows how to deal with such things.
> 
> And... I'll probably be one of those who sticks with them, because
> while I'm not a dev, I'm computer oriented enough to like the
> customization kde offers, and to take the bugs, now that they've
> gotten kde4 to a generally usable state, in stride.

Me too. KDE is so customizable, and I like things to be integrated. To
have the same file dialog for all applications. I also like the idea of
a semantic desktop, although I do not make use of it yet. Or activities,
which are probably nothing for me, but quite interesting.


> OTOH, I've not seen nearly the number of bugs you apparently have.
> We may use the same distro, but my usage patterns and hardware are
> obviously different.  And the bugs I DO see, I've been able to work
> around, or, in the first time for kde4, I've actually git-bisect a
> bug down to a specific commit, file the bug both upstream with kde
> and with gentoo, and using that commit 

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

John Layt writes:

> On Wednesday 29 Jun 2011 20:59:30 Alex Schuster wrote:
>> I had upgraded to KDEPIM 4.6 in February already, when it had been
>> unmasked accidentally for a day or so, and I also had lots of problems.
>> Fortunately, after the downgrade all was fine again.
> 
> Ah, I wonder if that's the problem?  Did you have any leftover Akonadi config 
> and cache files from that failed upgrade?  Migration did not work very well 
> back then and any leftovers may have caused things to mess up this time.

Good idea, John. You may be right, and it would explain why I did not
find other reports of my problem. There were some discussions about the
KMail shutdown, but that came from KMail not finding its maildir, which
had to be corrected. This setting was correct here. My problem was the
wrong entry in specialmailcollectionsrc instead.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:59:30 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>>> The mail migration part should have written its output to a file as
>>> well, check $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kmail-migrator
>>
>> Good idea to save this, although a notice box telling me would have been
>> nice. But there is no such file, locate only finds
>> .kde4/share/config/kmail-migratorrc.
> 
> kmail-migrator indeed appears here.  (@ wonko/alex, it's a dir, not a 
> file, in share/apps, not in share/config, where the rc is located.  Not 
> sure if you caught that or not.  If you only looked in config or only 
> looked for a file, not a dir, that would explain your not seeing it.  But 
> maybe it /is/ missing in your case, as I didn't have the earlier 
> migration attempt here, that might have messed yours up further.)

I simply used the locate command, which should match files and
directories. Now I checked again, and no, there is no such directory.
But I see kres-migrator/migration.log. It tells what has been migrated,
and also has some errors:
- Could not find root collection for resource akonadi_aknotes_resource_4
- Migration of 'Standard-Kalender' to native backend failed: Failed to
  create resource: Agent instance creation timed out.
- Migration of 'Standard-Kalender' to compatibility bridge failed:
  Unable to create compatibility bridge: Agent instance creation timed
  out.
Nothing about mail in this file though.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:24:58 +0200 as excerpted:
> > I did the big KDE 4.6.3 -> 4.6.4 upgrade. Along came the change to
> > KDEPIM 4.6. I feared for the worst, and indeed, it didn't work too
> > well.
> 
> Your experience mirrors mine to a large extent.  AFAIK we're both on
> Gentoo.

Right.

[...]
> Meanwhile, I had deliberately not entered my kwallet passwords so the
> remote pop3 accounts, which it DID import properly, couldn't download new
> messages to local storage that wasn't setup correctly yet.  With about
> six accounts spread over two servers, the periodic kwallet popups and
> manual entry popups when I canceled that, for each of them, got
> irritating, but there wasn't much I could do about it as I wanted any
> incoming mail left safely on the remote server until I was sure the local
> storage wasn't screwed up.

I'm so happy to use IMAP for all my accounts now. At least I do not have
to fear too much for my mails, and I can access them with other frontends.

> The second (maildir) import attempt went better, but crashed half way
> thru, apparently because some of the old mail folders were in mbox
> format. (I had tried switching to maildir some years ago, and that was
> the default, but found no way to switch the default folders as I couldn't
> delete the old mbox folders in kmail after I'd copied everything to the
> new maildir folders, so the defaults stayed as mbox, and continued to
> accumulate some mail, altho filters moved most on receipt to sorted
> maildir folders.  And, I had missed a couple non-defaults as well,
> including my family mail folder, which was still in mbox format.)
> 
> The *$#!$& maildir importer was trying to import the mboxes, including
> the huge family mbox, as *SINGLE* *HUGE* *MULTI-GIG* mails, one for each
> mbox!!

Oh dear.

[..]
> Only after performing this kabuki dance at EVERY kde/akonadi restart,
> putting in the kwallet password to get the passwords for the accounts ont
> he first pop3 server, opening kmail and canceling all the mail fetches
> for the second pop3 server accounts that will never get anywhere because
> they're waiting on a kwallet dialog that never appears, manually hitting
> fetchmail again, and entering the kwallet password a second time so
> akonadi/kmail can access the accounts on the second pop3 server, does it
> all work correctly.  I must do this EVERY time I restart the computer, kde
> or akonadi.

What a story. Quite a lot of work just in order to access one's mails,
which was no problem before.

Especially the last part is what annoys me since I use a graphical
desktop environment. The things you have to do after login until the
desktop is ready to use. Like, having to move around Galeon's windows
for years because their position was not saved.
Now, I'm okay with the situation. I only have to:

- enter my kdewallet password
- start the ssh-agent manually because somehow my autostart scripts are
  not run any more (probably easy to fix, I just did not investigate
  yet)
- disable window borders for xosview, as this special window setting is
  being ignored for this application
- On the first start, Kontact always complains that it seems to be
  running already. I can continue or exit. When I continue, Kontact
  crashes. When I exit, all kontact processes are gone, and I can start
  it normally. The bug is known, but sort of closed, because it is
  fixed in KDEPIM 4.6 and will not happen with the new kmail2. So I
  read.
- Is the Some-Akonadi-errors-happened dialog back? I saw it once, but I
  do not remember if it appeared on my last login. I had it for over a
  year, and suddenly it went away.
- Sometimes I have to re-arrange my three chromium windows. I have two
  grouped together and the third on another desktop, and from time to
  time they are mixed up.
- After a few minutes, I get a crash dialog for kde4init or someting.
  It does not seem to harm, the bug is also known already.

The whole login process takes a while, more than a minute at least,
because so many things are being started. Especially plasma takes a long
time to start.

> And while I'm getting no errors now, and mail seems to come in, the whole
> experience, all the bugs, all the beta-quality stuff and missing
> attention to details triggering stupid stuff like the kabuki dance I have
> to go thru every time I restart kde/akonadi, even after YEARS of work,
> all of that, has left me wondering at the stability of the whole setup.

Me too. I'm using KDE4 for over two years now, and still there are many
bugs and things that just do not work like I expect them to be. Like,
why can't I drag an image file from Dolphin into an existing Gwenview
window? Apparently I want this Gwenview to display the image, my 

[kde] Re: KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Tuesday, 2011-06-28, Alex Schuster wrote:

> > I did the big KDE 4.6.3 -> 4.6.4 upgrade. Along came the change to
> > KDEPIM 4.6. I feared for the worst, and indeed, it didn't work too
> > well.
> 
> Ah, sorry to hear that.
> Most distributions have fortunately not put the new PIM into the normal
> repositories yet but kept it in experiemental ones for early adopters.

I should have written that I am a Gentoo user on ~amd64, which is
something like Debian's testing branch. Although the KDEPIM upgrade was
a fault on my side. I wanted to wait a little for the big KDE upgrade,
but I overlooked kdelibs, and when this had been upgraded, I got the
usual errors about different API when starting konqueror. So I just did
the whole upgrade and just hoped it would work well.
I had upgraded to KDEPIM 4.6 in February already, when it had been
unmasked accidentally for a day or so, and I also had lots of problems.
Fortunately, after the downgrade all was fine again.

> > On the first login after the upgrade, Akonadi stuff was migrated, and
> > some errors happened. The notice boxes closed automatically before I
> > could make screenshots. Something with the migration of
> > 'Standard-Kalender' to native backend failed, and some more stuff I do
> > not  remember.
> 
> The mail migration part should have written its output to a file as well,
> check $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kmail-migrator

Good idea to save this, although a notice box telling me would have been
nice. But there is no such file, locate only finds
.kde4/share/config/kmail-migratorrc.

> > I did not find this akonadi_maildir_resource_3 in the Akonadi Console.
> > So I grepped through .kde4/share/config/* , and found it as
> > DefaultResourceId in the file 'specialmailcollectionsrc' only. I
> > deleted the file, but it is being recreated identically when Akonadi
> > is restarted. I do not know what this is and where is comes from, but
> > I created a dummy Maildir resource (it was called
> > akonadi_maildir_resource_5), and put that into the
> > specialmailcollectionsrc file. Now KMail sort of worked. Well, I got
> > other errors, but at least it no longer crashed during startup.
> 
> The special mail collections config basically holds the information which
> mail folders are to be used for default outbox, sent-mail, etc.
> The initial setup is therefore usually done by the mail sending service
> (Akonadi maildispatch agent) since it is the one requiring these folders.
> 
> The migrator attempts to switch that to the folders KMail1 used to use, so
> my guess is something went wrong there.
> The mail sending service should actually be able to re-create its default
> choice of folders if it detects problems, no idea why that did not kick in
> or why it did not work.

Okay, so I changed the entry to akonadi_maildir_resource_0. Looks good,
now my Outbox is being used, I just an error befor because it did not exist.

BTW, I have lots of resources named akonadi_ical_resource_0 to
akonadi_ical_resource_20 (only number 19 is missing), all with no file
name selected.

> > Whatever. Easy to fix, but I do not think KMail should crash because
> > of missing folders.
> 
> Very true.
> In case this happens again, could you probably save the crash report?

Looks like I forgot to. I was about to report this, but could not log
in, and left the report open until I logged out, without saving it. I
will try and see if it happens again.

There's so many strange things happening. One time when sending a mail,
akonadi asked the wallet for the mail password which I accepted, and
after this I got kmail's password dialog. I saved the mail as draft
instead, quit kmail and restarted, and did not have to specify any password.

> > On the other hand, I have 'akonadi_localbookmarks_resource_0', showing
> > my Konqueror bookmark folders. Is this normal? Is there any use? I
> > only
> > see the folders and the number of entries, but I do not see the
> > entries
> > itself. Can I delete this somehow, or make KMail not display them?
> > Without removing the bookmarks from Konqueror.
> 
> Weird thing those should show up in KMail, the content MIME type should be
> totally different.

I already had this in February, when I had the new KDEPIM for a day. I
guess I have to report some bugs on this.

> In any case you can remove the resource, removing a resource only removes
> the backend handler program, not the backend's storage (e.g. not removing
> a data file or directory).

Good to know. Thanks,

Wonko
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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

[Alex Schuster]

Nikos Chantziaras writes:

> I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
> continues with this release.  I remember KDE 4.3 (or maybe 4.2) where
> kwin was fast and nice.  After every release, it would become slower.
> It reached a negative peak with 4.6.  Now with 4.7 RC1, kwin has become
> even more slow.  It's extremely annoying to use.
> 
> What is happening to kwin?  It's becoming the definition of "sluggish
> GUI".  Out of every window manager I have tried, kwin is now the slowest
> of them all.

Is it also slow with compositing turned off (Alt-Shift-F12 to toggle)? With 
compositing turned on, moving windows is awfully slow here, while switching 
desktops is faster. But I guess this is an X / OpenGL problem on my side, 
other things are also slow. It's okay to use, but every time I log into 
another environment, I realize how fast window movements can be.

Does performance degrade over time? kwin has a memory leak, it starts with 
around 35M, but after some days it uses more than 1G. Weird things start to 
happen then, like title bars not being drawn any more. It's time for a 
logout then.

I'm using KDE 4.6.4 on Gentoo Linux.

Wonko
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[kde] KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

I did the big KDE 4.6.3 -> 4.6.4 upgrade. Along came the change to
KDEPIM 4.6. I feared for the worst, and indeed, it didn't work too well.

On the first login after the upgrade, Akonadi stuff was migrated, and
some errors happened. The notice boxes closed automatically before I
could make screenshots. Something with the migration of
'Standard-Kalender' to native backend failed, and some more stuff I do
not  remember.

The big problem was that KMail was no longer usable. I got this error:

  KMail encountered a fatal error and will terminate now.
  The error was:
  Failed to fetch the resource collection.

Until I closed this notice box, KMail was sort of usable, despite being
greyed out. But it crashed when doing things like saving mails as
drafts. As I did not have time to investigate this, I switched to
Thunderbird for a while. Which has its own problems, like not checking
my mail folders for new mail. So yesterday I spent some time to solve
this KMail issue.

When starting KMail manually, I got this in the output:

  kmail2(10305)/libakonadi
  Akonadi::SpecialCollectionsRequestJobPrivate::resourceScanResult:
  Failed to request resource "akonadi_maildir_resource_3" : "Unknown
  error. (Failed to fetch the resource collection.)"

I did not find this akonadi_maildir_resource_3 in the Akonadi Console.
So I grepped through .kde4/share/config/* , and found it as
DefaultResourceId in the file 'specialmailcollectionsrc' only. I deleted
the file, but it is being recreated identically when Akonadi is
restarted. I do not know what this is and where is comes from, but I
created a dummy Maildir resource (it was called
akonadi_maildir_resource_5), and put that into the
specialmailcollectionsrc file. Now KMail sort of worked. Well, I got
other errors, but at least it no longer crashed during startup.

First thing I wanted to do now is to enable KMail in Kontact again. But
when I try to open the Settings -> Configure Kontact menu, Kontact
crashes. I tried to report this, but DrKonqui was unable to log in
because of timeouts on bugs.kde.org I think. That crash is strange, some
days ago the settings menu worked, as I used it to remove KMail from
Kontact. Anyway, I edited kontactrc manually, and now KMail shows up in
Kontact again.

But there are more problems. KMail crashed when saving mails as drafts.
I also got warnings about invalid sent-mail, drafts and templates
folders. Indeed, those were empty. When setting them back as they were
before, I realized that I have more IMAP folders now. For example, one
identity had a folder 'Drafts' and 'Entwürfe' (German for 'drafts'), now
I also have '.maildir/Drafts' and '.maildir/Entwürfe'. The same goes for
'Sent' and 'Gesendet', now there's also '.maildir/Sent' and
'.maildir/Gesendet'.
Whatever. Easy to fix, but I do not think KMail should crash because of
missing folders.

One positive thing to mention: Akregator now asks if it should restore
the last session, so I did not lose this when Kontact crashed.

Oh, and for a while, whenever I sent a mail, I got a notification:
': Connection to server lost.' This also happens sometimes when
browsing mails, I advance to the next unread mail, get the message and
an empty message.

A more serious problem is that some IMAP account was missing completely.
I simply re-created the one I need, the other 1-2 accounts were for
testing anyway.

On the other hand, I have 'akonadi_localbookmarks_resource_0', showing
my Konqueror bookmark folders. Is this normal? Is there any use? I only
see the folders and the number of entries, but I do not see the entries
itself. Can I delete this somehow, or make KMail not display them?
Without removing the bookmarks from Konqueror.

And there is 'akonadi_maildir_resource_0', showing my local mails. I
probably can remove this completely, as the same stuff appears as
'KMail-Ordner' (KMail folder) already. Yes, seems this did no harm.

Then, my main IMAP account did not show all the mails. Some folders are
empty. Sometimes. Could this be because I have two IMAP accounts of the
same name, one configured to use disconnected mode? I removed this one,
and now, after restarting Kontact, it's better.

But I lost the mail I am just writing. I saved it as draft before
quitting Kontact, and now it is gone. Good thing I put it into the
clipboard first, just in case KMail would screw up and lose the mail.

It turned out that the drafts folder was empty again. I set it
accordingly, and finally all seems to be fine. I had to do some more
tuning, like defining my .signatures which were lost, but not much.

So, in the end, all seems to be working again. But it would have been
easier to start from scratch, define my three IMAP acocunts and
identities, and a local maildir.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: Running dolphin from a shell script and opening it in a specific directory.

[Alex Schuster]

John Woodhouse asks:

> Just how do I do this?
> 
> 
> I have already tried just typing dolphin in the console and it comes up
> with loads and loads of soprano errors preceded by dolphin (6667) but
> does launch. I need it to open pointing at a specific directory from a
> bash script at the point just before it exits.

Here I don't get any messages at all. Strange.
And when I give directories as arguments, they are opened, in tabs if there 
are more than one. With the --select option, you can also specify files, 
those will be selected.

> Also be interested in any example type web pages on this subject and more
> info on the general aspects of scripting KDE. 

I'm also interested about examples of scripting KDE. You can do many cool 
things via dbus, but I don't know yet how.

> This script must run from
> the bash shell. One aspect of that is how to stop the shell flashing up
> briefly?

Don't know what you mean by that.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: kmail problems with imap server

[Alex Schuster]

Dani Barna writes:

> After a few months of trying kmail, I could not access my mailbox on our
> imap server: the server refused connections (from any client, even
> alpine) After a long struggling our administrators figured out that the
> reason is that there were a lot of idle connections. Even though the
> server (they said) is configured to close idle connections after 30
> mins, kmail seems to manage to set some flags which make these
> connections stay alive... (?). It happened already twice, so I need to
> abandon kmail and switch to thunderbird, even though it still does not
> support local maildirs. Cheers

That's bad. I also experience some problems with Kontact/KMail, sometimes 
when I quit the Kontact process is still running, along with lots of 
kdeinit4: kio_imap4 processes. Kontact refuses to start then, so I just kill 
the process and all is fine. Sometimes I also _have_ to quit Kontact in 
order to see new mails - the folder view tells me there are new mails, but 
when I enter the foler, I do not see them.

If you like to stay with KMail, you could try to set up a new account as 
disconnected IMAP instead of plain IMAP, maybe this helps. I'm just trying 
this out for myself, after Kevin gave me the tip here.

I'm not sure what type these connections are, maybe they show up with 
netstat -a | grep kmail or netstat -a | grep , so you can 
check if it helps. Maybe even lsof | grep kmail gives information.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

I wrote:

> Whoa, that's it! I had aspell (with aspell-de and aspell-en) and hunspell
> installed (with myspell-de). But myspell-en was missing. I installed it,
> and now it's working! Thanks for the hint. Turns out that I was missing
> 'en' in $LINUGUAS, so it's quite my own fault.
> 
> But still, my test account has no automatic spell checking capability (I
> logged out and in again). And manual checking also works for American
> English, not for German. But as it's only a test account, so I close the
> case :)

One more glitch: What's happening now is that all words that are not German 
are shown as incorrect. Despite English (USA) being selected as default 
language for spell checking in systemsettings and in the composing window's 
settings -> spell check settings. I had to open this dialog and open the 
dropdown list, without selecting anything else than the already selecting 
English (USA), and then all is fine.
But there's a third setting, in Settings -> Configure KMail -> Identities -> 
Edit -> Extras -> Dictionary, and there I had German. When this is set to 
English, too, it's working as expected.

Oh, and when I start typing a message with Kopete, spell checking first 
worked, and suddenly stopped. But this looks like a feature, once you type 
too many incorrect words, spell checking is turned off automatically. 
Although it is still selected in the menu.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Rafa Griman wrote:

> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:49 AM, Alex Schuster 
> wrote:

> > [Oh, this has become rather lengthy. It's a description of my various
> > problems with KDE4, the details are not so important, no need to read
> > it all. My question is: Are your experiences similar to mine?]
> 
> No and yes.
> 
> My experiences WERE similar (not any more :) The thing is that the
> issues I had with KDE SC stability/hiccups/whatever were on a certain
> distro. When I switched distro ... KDE SC was stable.
> 
> I have not had any stability issues with KDE SC on ArchLinux.
> Previously I was running openSUSE, Mandriva, ... Same KDE SC versions.
> 
> With ArchLinux I have had NO issues whatsoever since KDE SC 4.2.

Strange. I did not expect so many differences.

> Stability issues that is. As you say, maybe some features are missing
> ... but whn I'm at work with Windows ... I also miss some features
> (hell ... I miss ALL the features I have in my ArchLinux + KDE SC at
> home ;)

I agree. I use it on my notebook right now while I'm away from my
desktop PC, but I only run thunderbird and firefox, and an xterm with a
tmux session running on my desktop PC. So I'm doing most things in the
shell, which is also okay for me. But on my Linux desktop I often prefer
to use the user interface KDE gives me.

> So the thing is: have you tried another distro? Honestly, change
> distros and you'll see that KDE SC isn't as bad as you think.

Nooo way, this won't happen :) Sorry, but I just love Gentoo Linux. I'd
rather give up KDE4 than using another distro for my personal purposes.

I also have some experience with [open]SUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu, but I
did not use KDE4 much there, and did only basic things that would work
here, too.


> Yes, I do suggest other people to use KDE.
> 
> OK, OK, ... ArchLinux, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, ... are "difficult"
> to use. You can't get your dad/mom/aunt/whatever to use it. TBH,
> that's BS. My sister in law is running ArchLinux on an ACER ONE 800 KM
> from me. She has NO idea of computers (much less Linux).
> 
> What I did was install ArchLinux with KDE SC on her netbook on the
> weekend, she left on Sunday ... and hasn't had an issue in over 2
> years. Just one "support call" because she changed DSL provider and
> the guy that came to install the DSL didn't know Linux. She called me,
> told her to start a konsole, su -, /etc/rc.d/network stop,
> /etc/rc.d/network start ... WOW !! I can browse the web again !!!
> That's all it took.
> 
> She listens to music, edits her own videos, edits her own music,
> browses the web, watches movies, ... Oh, BTW, she's an aerobics
> instructor ;)
> 
> My small sister ... same case, but with Debian. ex-girlfriend ... same
> case with Gentoo (maybe that's why she's an ex-girlfriend ;)

My small sister's PC runs Gentoo, because I installed it and I know this
distro best. But she only uses KMail, Firefox and aMSN, nothing special.
Not sure what to install on my Mom's notebook. ArchLinux and Gnome
maybe. Something very very simple, this stuff is new to her. She does
not speak English, so a good localization is necessary, KDE4 still has
too much English stuff.

> My wife: ArchLinux + KDE SC ... I work 100 KM from home and travel a
> lot. Support calls since she uses KDE SC 4.2? None ...
> 
> The trick is to setup the computer with all the stuff they need. It's
> stable, it works, no virus, ... no calls :)
> 
> In the openSUSE Spanish mailing list, there have been all types of
> regrets towards KDE 4 ... how many have tried KDE on another distro ?
> ... But people keep on ranting that it's KDE's fault. That's not true.
> We all know that distros usually add some "features" to "help" you and
> "make your life easier and nicer".
> 
> Honestly, try ArchLinux. It just works. Maybe you have to spend a
> whole weekend installing it and configuring it. But once it's up and
> running ... you never ever configure it again: it's a rolling distro
> 
> :)

Yes, I heard good things about ArchLinux, I think it would be my choice
if there were no Gentoo. And a rolling distro is great. Back in my
SuSE/Mandrake/Debian/Libranet days, there was not a single upgrade from
one version to another that did not have big flaws. Some bugs were
fixed, but others appeared, all in all things went not much better, and
I had to put time into discovering the new problems and finding
workarounds for them.
Gentoo sure also has it problems, but if some update refuses to install
I can continue working. I do not have to take a free weekend like for a
Mandrake update, hoping that the time would be enough to get a working
system again, and

[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Tuesday, 2011-05-10, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > Actually, I'm quite okay with kmail, although there's some more
> > problems. Sometimes it shows new mails in my IMAP inbox that I already
> > deleted, the solution is to log into my mail server, start mutt, and
> > let it purge these mails. It also hangs sometimes, especially if my IP
> > had changed, but that's not always the case. I close it, and if it
> > doesn't restart because there's still a hanging kontact process, I
> > kill it. And I avoid to delete IMAP folders, or I navigate really
> > quickly out of the folder, because if not kmail will crash. And I
> > really would like to use multiple tabs, but when other tabs are open,
> > mail in those folders is not being checked. Umm, actually that's a lot
> > of bugs. Maybe you are right, but I got used to Kmail, and I tend to
> > prefer the KDE application over other alternatives.
> 
> What you could be trying is to use Disconnected IMAP instead of normal
> one. This is a two way sync of a local cache and the IMAP server,
> meaning you can access mails at any time, even when offline.

Which would be nice indeed. DSL is acting a little instable here sometimes.

> I am using this with several IMAP accounts and have never seen a problem
> with stability. Additionally it allows KMail to apply local filters on
> "incoming" messages.

So I created a new account (when I found out there is no option to set
in the existing account), there I can select 'Disconnected IMAP'. I
never noticed this account type before, is it new?

A little glitch was that suddenly (maybe after the update to 4.6.3?)
KMail is no longer able to access the wallet for new passwords. It can
retrieve the existing ones so I have not noticed this yet, but new
accounts cannot store their password in the wallet.

Downloading messages... whoops, KMail does not like when the partition
gets full :) But no harm was done, KMail threw some error messages and
exited cleanly.

Okay, it seems to work, thanks for the pointer! Now let's see if I also
have trouble with new mails that are not shown.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 11 May 2011 13:46:10 +0200 as excerpted:
> > On the test account, it's still not working. I have only the German
> > language to choose there, although American English is enabled in
> > systemsettings.
> 
> You have the dictionaries for both installed, right?  Let's see...
> according to the kdelibs dependencies, USE=spell depends on
> app-text/enchant, which depends on either aspell or hunspell depending on
> /its/ USE flags.  I switched to hunspell some versions ago, and have
> myspell-en as the dictionary used based on my my linguas=en setting.  If
> you have German as well, presumably you'd need either myspell-de or
> myspell-de-alt installed for hunspell, or the parallel aspell and its
> dicts if you have USE=aspell instead of USE=hunspell.  (enchant has a
> third USE flag as well, zemberek, but that's Turkish only, apparently.)

Whoa, that's it! I had aspell (with aspell-de and aspell-en) and hunspell 
installed (with myspell-de). But myspell-en was missing. I installed it, and 
now it's working! Thanks for the hint. Turns out that I was missing 'en' in 
$LINUGUAS, so it's quite my own fault.

But still, my test account has no automatic spell checking capability (I 
logged out and in again). And manual checking also works for American 
English, not for German. But as it's only a test account, so I close the 
case :)

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Anne Wilson posted on Wed, 11 May 2011 09:57:19 +0100 as excerpted:
> > On Tuesday 10 May 2011 00:49:49 Alex Schuster wrote:
> >> Automatic spell checking stopped working in 4.4.4, and still does not
> >> work.
> > 
> > It's no longer set in KMail, but in System Settings > Locale.  It works
> > for me

I thought this setting is the default only? Anyway, it's activated there and 
in KMail. I have German and American English as preferred languages.

I just created a fresh test account, activated spell checking and tried in 
KMail. Same result, no spell checking. Even when I choose Extras -> Spell 
check, nothing happens.

I don't worry much about this though. It's just one more bug I experience. 
I'll ask on the Gentoo-User list if people there have similar experiences... 
but hey, Duncan just also replied, so I'll reply to his mail instead.

BTW, when switching back to my normal user, the system was swapping and it 
took > 10 seconds until I got the user / password dialog to unlock the 
desktop. Until then, I had a clear view of the desktop.

> FWIW, it's working (and has been all along) here on Gentoo with, now kde
> 4.6.3, too.
> 
> But I'm running ~arch with the kde and x11 overlays, always
> emerge --update --deep --newuse, and always etc-update, revdep-rebuild
> and emerge --depclean after I've finished updating.  It's quite possible
> that particularly the revdep-rebuilds, but also the --deep updates and
> the fact that I run ~arch, have all the versions and dependencies synced
> so it's working for me, where it might not be for those on stale^H^Hble
> who aren't so meticulous about keeping all their dependencies updated
> and revdep- rebuilt.

I do the same except for revdep-rebuild which I do not run that often sinde 
Gentoo's preserved-rebuild feature. It usually finds it has noting to do 
anyway.

Update: I just started a new mail message, and suddenly the automatic spell 
checking works! I had changed the default from American English to German 
before. When I select English again, it's not working.

On the test account, it's still not working. I have only the German language 
to choose there, although American English is enabled in systemsettings.

The KMail composing window also looks different on that account. There I 
have 'Dictionary', 'To', and 'Subject', here on my normal account I have 
'Identity', 'Reply-To', 'To', 'Copy' and 'Subject'.

Whatever. It's not an important feature for me.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: pager insists on 2x2 layout

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> I believe I've seen similar, a few times.  But I don't worry too much
> about it and just let it stay at the default.  For switching, I normally
> use either the desktop-grid view (set to trigger when the mouse hits the
> top-left corner of the desktop), or more frequently, simply scroll-wheel
> on the desktop itself.

> Meanwhile, there's also the individual keyboard shortcuts for each
> desktop, if worse comes to worse.  I don't use them much on my main
> machine, but DO use them frequently on my 1024x600 resolution netbook,
> where I have the checkbox set for kwin to maximize nearly everything,
> including dialog windows, so the desktop is very rarely available to
> scroll over.  These are CTRL-F1 thru CTRL-F12 (up to 12 desktops) by
> default, but I map them to Win-F1 (Meta-F1) upward instead, as the Win
> key is what I map nearly all my windows and other kwin shortcuts to.

Whoa, using the Win key for window-relates shortcuts is a really great
idea! Actually, that's what I do too :)  Finally a use for this dammn
Windows key. So I'm using it much much more often than when I'm using
Windows.
I use Win-F1 to Win-F6 to change desktops, and with Win-Shift-F1 to
Win-Shift-F6 I can send an application to the desired destination. Or
make it sticky on all desktops with Win-Shift-Esc.
The scrolling wheel works, too, but I don't use it at all, I think I
better deactivate it. I also don't think like my remote desktop is my
admin desktop plus three, instead I think 'admin' is 1, and 'remote' is
4. And I can switch with one keypress, instead of having to scroll the
wheel exactly tree times.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Tue, 10 May 2011 22:48:36 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> But htey were no power users. And thast was before KDE4.
> 
> You were saying something about your spellchecker being broken.  That's 
> too bad, as you NEED it. =:^)

Nah, I'm putting in these errors deliberately until someone finally
fixes the spllchckr bug :)

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Kevin Krammer writes:

> On Tuesday, 2011-05-10, Alex Schuster wrote:
> 
>> I never used a distribution list with kontact, so I tried this for
>> myself. I created a new contact group 'Testgroup' in kaddressbook and
>> added some people with their e-mail addresses. Kmail then knows about
>> this Testgroup (it auto-completes it) - great, I think before KDE 4.6
>> addressbook and kmail did not exchange their data, Kmail did not know
>> about the people in the address book.
> 
> KMail had access to the addressbook from some version of the KDE2 cycle.
> KAddressBook, KMail (and other applications, e.g. Kopete) basically read the 
> same files.

But I rememer that auto-completion in Kmail did not work for addresses
in Kaddressbook, and I'm pretty sure I read about this in a bug report.
And that it's fixed now, which I can confirm. My friend who quit KDE4
also experienced this problem, but with a rather old version of KDE4 at
that time.

>> But when I send a test mail,
>> nothing happens. It turned out that the mail is being sent to
>> testgr...@myhost.my.domain, and not to the members. This seems to be a
>> known bug that was already fixed, but it's happening again. [1]
> 
> Could be a problem with the Nepomuk setup.
> It might not be running or it might not have told about the contacts.

At least Kmail autocompletes the name.


>> So I had to first add the system tray plasmoid, then I could
>> get the password and downlaod the file.
> 
> Just for future occasions:
> 
> kioclient copy ftp://someserver/somefile /some/local/dir

Hmm, normally I do not know the name of 'somefile'. But I did not know
about kioclient, that's a nice utility that will come handy I think!

>> BTW, I wouldn't have been able
>> to download it with dolphin anyway [3], because it has German umlauts in
>> the file name.
> 
> Might depend on the way your access FTP. If you have an ftp:// URL there 
> won't 
> be any problem no matter of character, because they needs to be encoded 
> anyway.

I have an ftp://user@host/directory/ URL, the file name I don't know
until I look into this directory. Dolphin shows the file with the
correct name (including the umlaut), but insists the file does not exist
when I try to download it. gftp show the file name in the remote folder
as empty, but it is able to download the file. Dolphin now replaces the
umlaut in the local file with a question mark in a black diamond, and
still is not able to do anything with it.

My system is UTF8, the files with umlauts are latin1. The shell also
does not show the umlaut in the file name, it is replaced by two
question marks. But I can access it by using tab completion or
wildcards. Or I convert it with convmv -f latin1 -t utf8.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Billie Walsh writes:

> On 05/09/2011 06:49 PM, Alex Schuster wrote:

>> I'm somewhat diesappointed with KDE4. I'm using it since 4.2, and it's
>> become much much better - but still, there are just so many bugs. Is it
>> just me, or it this normal? Would you suggest other people (being
>> unskilled uses, not hackers) to use KDE4? What OS and desktop
>> environment does your Mom's PC run?
> 
> I've never hesitated to suggest Kubuntu to someone unfamiliar with 
> Linux. I usually tell them that there is a bit of a learning curve to 
> make the changeover. I suggest that they dual boot with whatever they 
> are using and play around with Kubuntu when they have some spare time 
> until they get used to it. That's pretty much how I made the switch from 
> Windows to Linux. After a while I realized that I hadn't booted into 
> Windows for weeks. I never looked back after that.

I also suggested Windows people to give Linux a try, and they were okay
with it. It works different, but for most purposes (mail, WWW, some word
processor) there's no big difference. And they were happy that they no
longer got their PCs infected by viruses or spyware. But htey were no
power users. And thast was before KDE4.

>> I never used a distribution list with kontact, so I tried this for
>> myself. I created a new contact group 'Testgroup' in kaddressbook and
>> added some people with their e-mail addresses. Kmail then knows about
>> this Testgroup (it auto-completes it) - great, I think before KDE 4.6
>> addressbook and kmail did not exchange their data, Kmail did not know
>> about the people in the address book. But when I send a test mail,
>> nothing happens. It turned out that the mail is being sent to
>> testgr...@myhost.my.domain, and not to the members. This seems to be a
>> known bug that was already fixed, but it's happening again. [1]
> 
> I tried Kmail once years ago and absolutely hated it. Haven't tried it 
> since, and with all the issues I read about on the help lists I wont 
> ever try it again.

Actually, I'm quite okay with kmail, although there's some more
problems. Sometimes it shows new mails in my IMAP inbox that I already
deleted, the solution is to log into my mail server, start mutt, and let
it purge these mails. It also hangs sometimes, especially if my IP had
changed, but that's not always the case. I close it, and if it doesn't
restart because there's still a hanging kontact process, I kill it. And
I avoid to delete IMAP folders, or I navigate really quickly out of the
folder, because if not kmail will crash. And I really would like to use
multiple tabs, but when other tabs are open, mail in those folders is
not being checked. Umm, actually that's a lot of bugs. Maybe you are
right, but I got used to Kmail, and I tend to prefer the KDE application
over other alternatives.

> I used Thunderbird in Windows when it was first released. When I 
> switched over to Linux I continued to use Thunderbird. It just simply 
> works. No fuss, no muss. Creating a distribution list is very simple.

I _do_ use thunderbird on Windows (right at the moment), and it also has
its problems. Like hanging when quitting, and eating 100% CPU time until
I kill it. And it tends to not remember that I want my folder views
threaded. But it's okay for me.

[FTP with dolphin]
>> get the password and downlaod the file. BTW, I wouldn't have been able
>> to download it with dolphin anyway [3], because it has German umlauts in
>> the file name.
> 
> I use Gftp. OK, I know it's not a "K" program, but it's much easier to 
> use that any of the "K" programs. Sorry. Save everything to the 
> bookmarks. One click and I'm ready to upload and download. Well, two 
> actually. One for the bookmark menu and one for the actual site. I keep 
> everything set up so that when I click on a site it changes the local 
> directory to where it's supposed to be as well as the remote directory. 
> It's simple.

I'll have a look... ah, right, I've used in the past already. I guess
there are lots of FTP frontends, but if you say it's working fine, why
not use it. I have no problem with Gnome applications, although I would
prefer to use dolphin if it were working correctly, as it integrates
better into my KDE desktop. I thought about krusader, but there I find
no bookmark facility.

> One thing you mention, about the warning box's. I find that sometimes 
> they wind up behind anything else on the desktop. they should pop on top 
> of whatever, but

By now I know about this effect, but when it first happened it took me a
while to figure out what's going on. The application seemed to hang, and
I killed it two times until I saw what was going on.

Wonko
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[kde] A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Hi there!

[Oh, this has become rather lengthy. It's a description of my various
problems with KDE4, the details are not so important, no need to read it
all. My question is: Are your experiences similar to mine?]

I'm somewhat diesappointed with KDE4. I'm using it since 4.2, and it's
become much much better - but still, there are just so many bugs. Is it
just me, or it this normal? Would you suggest other people (being
unskilled uses, not hackers) to use KDE4? What OS and desktop
environment does your Mom's PC run?

One week ago, a friend wrote me an e-mail that he gives up on using
KDE4. He spent half a day to configure some KDE menus, quick starters
and such stuff on his uncle's PC. Works, but it took him a while. Then
he spent some hours to figure out how to create a distribution list, and
did not succeed. And he wonders why such basic things do not work - were
they not tested, did someone of the developers actuall try it out? Were
they working, and is this a new bug? Meanwhile, systemsettings had
crashed about 20 times on that day.
He compares KDE4 with a new car that has a great new injector
technology, but even in the fourth revision the windscreen wipers just
do not work. So he gave up. And he is sad, because his uncle, who does
not know much about Linux, got the impression is that this linux is
something for weirdos only.
I never used a distribution list with kontact, so I tried this for
myself. I created a new contact group 'Testgroup' in kaddressbook and
added some people with their e-mail addresses. Kmail then knows about
this Testgroup (it auto-completes it) - great, I think before KDE 4.6
addressbook and kmail did not exchange their data, Kmail did not know
about the people in the address book. But when I send a test mail,
nothing happens. It turned out that the mail is being sent to
testgr...@myhost.my.domain, and not to the members. This seems to be a
known bug that was already fixed, but it's happening again. [1]

Now here's a list of other weird stuff happening during the last week:

Monday, my boss phoned me and wanted me to download a PowerPoint file
from our FTP server. This happens often, so I have a folder view with
some starters to access various sites via FTP, VNC and such. But when I
double-clicked on the current version of the .ppt document, dolphin
crashed. Seems to happen all the time I click a .ppt document. And when
one dolphin crashes, _all_ instances crash. It's annoying to re-create
them as I like them to be - for example, there is a dolphin grouped with
a konsole window, the dolphin has two tabs, each tab is a split view,
and they show specific locations. Takes a while to re-create this setup.
I can also just log out and in again, but then I have to save my work
first. And I lose stuff like all the tabs in akregator. Those seem to be
saved when I manually save the session, but this often messes up the
session, so I never do this without doing a backup of my .kde4 directory.
Back to the download. I clicked my program starter in order to open a
dolphin with the FTP target directory, but nothing happened. No idea
why, just another weird problem. I started dolphin manually and entered
the URL, but it did not connect. So I went to the text terminal and used
command line ftp. The problem is that I did not know the password,
that's what I have the wallet for. But how to access the wallet? I only
found out about the --show option to kwalletmanager after this, before I
used to open it by using the system tray. But I had the tray disabled
because of another nasty bug that made plasma crash dozends of times per
day [2]. So I had to first add the system tray plasmoid, then I could
get the password and downlaod the file. BTW, I wouldn't have been able
to download it with dolphin anyway [3], because it has German umlauts in
the file name.

The next problem was that akregator fired up two notifications every few
minutes, that the certificate of my own web server is unverified. Yes,
it's self-generated, and in the past I could just hit the accept button
and tell it to also accept it in the future. This no longer worked, when
I just came back to my PC I have to close dozends of these windows. The
problem somehow went away when I finally logged out, but that took a
while as I was busy doing things.

Same day: Akregator suddenly messed up articles - feeds showed entries
that came from other feeds. I restored the akregator configs and data
from a backup and this is working again. But many inexperienced users
would not have a clue what to do in such a case.
BTW, the date column in akregator is gone, this happens from time to
time here for two months [4]. It's not very annoying, unless I
accidentally click on the title column and everything is no longer
sorted by date, and I canot revert to sorting. Again, I restore the
akregator config file and alls fine again. For a while.

Another day I wanted to reboot, so I initiated a shutdown via the menu.
The screen went grey as usual, but the shutdown

[kde] Re: pager insists on 2x2 layout

[Alex Schuster]

Daniel Barna writes:

> I configured pager to have 4 desktops in 1 row, and assigned the shortcut 
> keys 
> Ctrl+Alt+Right/Left to change desktop. 
> 
> All went nicely, but after each restart/login, the Desktop Switch On-Screen 
> Display shows a 2x2 layout, and correspondingly, the above keyboard shortcuts 
> only allow to change 1 desktop (because the other two are not left- or right, 
> but below these). In the Panel, the desktops are organized 4 in a row.
> 
> Is this a known bug? Is there an easy fix for this?

I don't know. But here it's the other way around, sometimes: I have 3x2
desktops, but a few times it happened that when I log in, it is 6x1
layout. Somtimes also the position of the pager was shifted two
positions to the left. I did  not care too much about it, and undid the
changes. But it makes me wonder how much other stuff might get changed
that I don't notice directly.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: is there a way to assign apps. to certain activities

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan wrote:

> Meanwhile, I NOT have the different activity (widgets) per desktop option
> (found in kcontrol, workspace appearance and behavior, workspace
> behavior, virtual desktops) active (and I've no desire to test it
> either, last time I got to adventurous testing different plasma options
> I got hit with cascading bugs... an experience I'd rather not trigger
> again when I'm happy with the current already customized setup), so I'm
> not sure how it interacts with the above, but with the two concepts
> linked, it seems that again, there'd be little use for both submenus as
> sending an app to a different desktop would be the same thing as sending
> it to that desktop's activity.  If that's true, then the activities
> submenu may be hidden if that's enabled, as well, since one can simply
> use the desktops submenu to the same effect.

Again, this was changed recently, you no longer get a different activity for 
each virtual desktop when you enable the 'Different widgets for each 
desktop' checkbox. Instead, the plasmoids of an activity span over all 
desktops. I have six desktops, but still only one activity.

Wonko
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