Upgraded to kmail2--mostly successful but that unpleasant

[O. Sinclair]

On 14/09/2012 08:15, Michael Hirsch wrote:
> So I finally upgraded kubuntu this week.  I went from 11.04 to 11.10 to
> 12.04.  In the middle I only booted long enough to start the upgrade--I
> didn't test to see if everything worked.
>
> It seems to have gone fairly smoothly, except for kmail.  kmail wouldn't
> start, and would tell me to run the upgrader interactively, but when I
> ran it it would say it had already run.  I
> deleted ~/.kde4/share/config/kmail-migratorrc and it ran, supposedly
> successfully, but then kmail would not run.
>
> Following some internet sleuthing, I deleted ~/.kde/share/apps/akonadi
> and ~/.config/akonadi and my .kmail2rc and it finally ran, and even
> figured out some of my email accounts.  But all my mail is missing!
>
> There is a File->Import Messages menu item that looks promising.  Maybe
> I can import all my emails and then I will be able to read them.  There
> is a likely sounding "Import KMail Maildirs and Folder Structure" item
> in a drop-down.  Of course, it warns me not to import ~/Mail, which is
> where my mail is, but I think it is just confused.  Why should it worry
> about infinitely looping on importing mail when kmail now stores my mail
> in a mysql database?
>
> There is a funny warning that I don't really understand: "Since it is
> possible to recreate the folder structure, the folders will be stored
> under: "KMail-Import" in your local folder."  Should that be "Since it
> is impossible..."?  I still don't understand, but oh well.  I'll try it.
>
> So I click the button below "Please select the folder to import to" and
> choose to import to a subfolder in my local email.
>
> The next part is a disaster.  I have hundreds of email folders, and the
> dialog makes me start over for each one.  So I have to pick where to
> import to, then navigate to a folder and select it.  Ultimately I find
> that I can multi-select all my mbox folders at once and do a big import.
>   They get imported into folders named MBOX-oldname.  Why they developer
> thinks I care that they used to be in mbox format I can't imagine.  Now
> I have to go rename them all, but at least they loaded quickly.
>
> Now I still have lots of slightly newer maildir folders to import.  It
> takes me a long time to realize that if never actually lets me select a
> maildir folder and say okay.  If I select a folder the dialog enters
> that folder showing the sub-folders.  Finally, I just give up and I
> click "okay" when I've entered the folder in question with nothing
> inside selected.  Wow, it actually starts importing all my folders.
>
> Moronically, it is putting every folder into a KMail-import folder, but
> I guess I was warned.  I still don't understand why it would do that.
>
> So, I guess the upshot is that it worked, mostly.  I still get the
> heebie-jeebies at the thought of keeping all my mail in mysql instead of
> easily to read mbox and maildir folders, and I have all my folders named
> stupidly, but it looks like I haven't lost my mail.  That's good.
>
> This has probably been the worst upgrade experience I've had in my
> almost 20 years of running Linux.  I can't believe that anyone thought
> this was a good idea, or that it was ready to use.  Since I got past the
> kmail crashing instantly it has only crashed twice--but I've only been
> running it a couple of hours.
>
> Let's hope that no more big changes are coming.
>
> Michael
>
>
Well, did you read the - by now old - kubuntu advise to not upgrade but 
do a "move/backup your email, set up new kmail and then import your 
stuff" advise?

I tried "migrate" at least twice and then gave up. Moved my mails away, 
created fresh KMail and imported mails. Worked way better though I also 
had to move all folders from "KMail-imported" to where I wanted them in 
"Local Folders".

And yes, though 4.9 is the best KMail2 this far it still unstable if you 
ask me. Accidentally moved a folder with subfolders to another folder 
(hate clickpads, give me touchpad with clickbuttons any day) and moving 
it back caused some sort of database total hickup. I eventually sorted 
it, though it took me literally hours and CPU nearly burnt out.

But this is why my wife use Thunderbird and not KMail - she would just 
have sat there and "where the h..l did all the mails disappear to"?

Note I love KMail, it is the whole chain of Nepomuk-Akonadi-MySql that 
is at least for now too unstable for "average Joe" use.

Sinclair