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Tag: pim

Common questions on Akonadi and Nepomuk in KDE PIM 4.8

March 14, 2012 / / 4 Comments

 I am not usually a copy/paste kind of guy but I thought it is good to have the following information visible on this blog instead of “just” being a forum post.

I was triggered by a linuxquestions.org post which pointed to another post on forum.kde.org called “Common questions on Akonadi and Nepomuk in KDE PIM“. The post contains a Q&A between one of the board admins and Christian Mollenkopf. This is its full text, copied verbatim (and reformatted for this post). I hope this helps some people who wonder why their PC is so busy indexing on every boot.

 

Q&A session with Christian Mollenkopf:

Starting from version 4.7, KDE PIM has integrated Nepomuk for many operations such as search, message tagging, and address auto-completion. This post answers some of the common questions related to the state of this integration.

Q. Will email which is encrypted be indexed in any form, or will it be ignored?
A. It will be ignored since the search index is not secure.

Q. Will the indexer attempt to match the contents of my address book against emails?
A. Yes, the extracted contacts should be merged by email address.

Q. What occurs when email is read or deleted using other clients on shared mail boxes (such as IMAP mail boxes)?
A. It’s either removed or re-indexed.

Q. If the IMAP server supports it, does Akonadi use the server’s search capabilities or index it using Nepomuk anyway?
A. The indexer is protocol agnostic, that is, it works regardless of the server type used, be it POP, IMAP, or local mailbox. If a supported item (a message) is in Akonadi, it’s indexed. If it is changed it’s reindexed, and if it is deleted it’s removed from the index. It doesn’t really matter where the item is coming from.

Q. The performance of mail indexing is slow, how can it be improved?
A. There are different ways to achieve that:

  • Index only what you need. Right click on a folder, select Folder Properties, then the Maintenance tab, then “Disable fulltext indexing“: this will disable indexing for that specific folder;
  • Turn off email indexing altogether by unchecking the relevant option in System Settings, Desktop Search (only available from 4.8 and later);
  • Wait until initial indexing has completed. Indexing is completed when the akonadi_nepomuk_feederrc file in your KDEHOME/share/config directory (KDEHOME is usually .kde or .kde4) contains the following:
    [InitialIndexing]
    IndexCompatLevel=3
  • Locate the akonadi_nepomuk_feederrc file and change DisableIdleDetection to true:
    [akonadi_nepomuk_feeder]
    DisableIdleDetection=true

    This will cause the feeder to keep on indexing regardless of idle status, increasing CPU usage significantly but on the long run reducing the time to complete indexing. As a matter of fact, the real performance issue is the initial indexing, as it can take very long (days with large mailboxes), and is restarted if interrupted (i.e. because of a restart, not by sleep-mode or alike). Once initial indexing is over, performance will be significantly better. The KDE PIM developers are aware of this problem and will work on a solution.

Eric

kmail terminates during startup with “Failed to fetch the resource collection”

November 13, 2011 / / 11 Comments

One thing that keeps boggling people’s minds when they use KDE is Akonadi, the framework used to access PIM-like data. PIM being “Personal Information Management”. Akonadi leaves me in the dark too, sometimes!

If you want to know a bit more about how Akonadi sits at the core of your personal data management in KDE, you might want to read these articles first, one being two  years old and the other a bit more recent… http://thomasmcguire.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/akonadi-nepomuk-and-strigi-explained/ and http://vizzzion.org/blog/2010/08/demystifying-akonadi/ . This is also a nice article “Akonadi misconception #1: where is my data?“: http://blogs.kde.org/node/4503 which is definitely worth checking out.

In the meantime, there is an issue I wanted to discuss with you, considering Akonadi. When you upgrade to KDE 4.7.x coming from Slackware’s KDE 4.5.5, the upgrade process is not always smooth. The PIM suite in KDE 4.7.x is now using Akonadi as its backend, meaning your PIM data (kmail, kontact etc) are migrated over to the Akonadi storage the very first time you start your new KDE. This migration is not always proceeding perfectly.

There’s a thread on LinuxQuestions.org about kmail crashing on startup with a very specific error message “Failed to fetch the resource collection“. I provided the solution in that thread but thought it would be good to document it here in the blog as well. The bug is fairly old, it is being discussed in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259355

What you have to do if you encounter this issue, is the following:

  1. Launch Akonadi Console (for instance by pressing “Alt-F2” to open krunner and typing “akonadiconsole”).
  2. In the “Agents” tab, select the “Local Folders” resource.
  3. Select “Configure > Configure natively…”.
  4. If an error appears indicating that “the current folder does not exist” don’t worry. Select a new directory which does not yet exist, for instance: /home/<USERNAME>/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/

This should fix the issue with kmail.

You can fix it the hard way, by removing all of your “.kde” directory content but that is so rude, and you lose a lot of other configurations besides your mail.

A whole section of the KDE User Base is devoted to Akonadi troubleshooting, I recommend you check that out if you run into Akonadi related issues: http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi_4.4/Troubleshooting

Cheers, Eric

KDE 4.6 second release candidate

January 6, 2011 / / 30 Comments

Here it is, the second release candidate of what will become KDE Software Compilation 4.6.

Get your Slackware packages for KDE 4.6.RC2 (4.5.95 is the official version) here: http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/4.5.95/ or on any of my mirrors (http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/4.5.95/ or http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/4.5.95/). These packages are not fit for Slackware 13.1. You have to be running an up-to-date Slackware-current!.

Follow the instructions in the accompanying README for installing these packages, or upgrading from an earlier release.

You can read my previous article on KDE 4.6 beta and RC1 here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/starting-with-kde-4-6 and http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-4-6-first-release-candidate/. KDE 4.6 no longer needs HAL I have disabled HAL on my laptop (chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hald), and do not miss any functionality.

And I will repeat this from the previous post: read the announcement by the PIM team (read the story) that the 4.6 version of kdepim which should have accompanied the official release of KDE 4.6 has been delayed. At the time when KDE 4.6 will be officially released, you may want to keep the stable PIM release 4.4.9 which is already part of slackware-current and which is fully compatible with KDE 4.6.

In the meantime, I ship packages for the third beta of kdepim 4.6 along with KDE 4.5.95.

Have fun, Eric

PS: rsync is available as always:

  • rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien-kde/
  • rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/
  • rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/

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