Kontact Error - Akonadi Service Not Running

[TerryJC]

The upgrade went pretty well until I opened Kontact to read my email. Startup took longer than usual and the main area displayed 'Starting the Personal Information Management Service'. Eventually, the main area was almost completely grey thus:



When I click on 'Details' nothing happens.

I cannot see anything in the 'background Services' dialog that looks relevant and akonadi-server' is installed along with a number of other related packages.

How do I get akonadi running again?

[TerryJC]

The upgrade went pretty well until I opened Kontact to read my email. Startup took longer than usual and the main area displayed 'Starting the Personal Information Management Service'. Eventually, the main area was almost completely grey ....

How do I get akonadi running again?

An update to this question. This machine (which exhibits the problem) had a clean installation of Kubuntu 16.04 fairly recently. However, the /home directory is on a separate partition, which was not reformatted. That partition was created some time ago (years not months).

I have just completed the upgrade on my second machine that had 16.04. This is a new Dell XPS-13 DE and hadn't had anything on it before apart from the default Ubuntu supplied by Dell. I have not seen this problem with this machine.

Can anyone advise me what to do to 'clean out' my akonadi configuration without also throwing away all my account and contact information?

[sasha]

What does "akonadictl start" do?
Any error logs here ~.local/share/akonadi, there should be mysql.err and akonari.err or similar somewhere in that path

[TerryJC]

What does "akonadictl start" do?
Any error logs here ~.local/share/akonadi, there should be mysql.err and akonari.err or similar somewhere in that path

Running "akonadictl start" gives:

[FONT=monospace] sudo akonadictl start
[sudo] password for terry:  
Starting Akonadi Server...
   done.
Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
terry@OptiPlex:~$ akonadiprivate_log: search paths:  ("/usr/local/sbin", "/usr/local/bin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/bin", "/sbin", "/bin", 
"/snap/bin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/local/sbin", "/usr/local/libexec", "/usr/libexec", "/opt/mysql/libexec", "/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin",
 "/opt/mysql/sbin")                                                                                             
Found mysql_install_db:  "/usr/bin/mysql_install_db"                                                            
Found mysqlcheck:  "/usr/bin/mysqlcheck"                                                                        
Using mysqld: "/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi"                                                                        
mysqld reports version 5.7.15 (Oracle MySQL)                                                                    
Executing: "/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi" "--defaults-file=/home/terry/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf --datadir=/home/terry/.local/share
/akonadi/db_data/ --socket=/tmp/akonadi-root.D8vrWA/mysql.socket"                                               
Database process exited unexpectedly during initial connection!                                                 
executable: "/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi"                                                                          
arguments: ("--defaults-file=/home/terry/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf", "--datadir=/home/terry/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/", "--
socket=/tmp/akonadi-root.D8vrWA/mysql.socket")                                                                  
stdout: ""                                                                                                      
stderr: "mysqld: Error on realpath() on '/var/lib/mysql-files' (Error 2 - No such file or directory)\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986522Z 0 [
Warning] The syntax '--log_warnings/-W' is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use '--log_error_verbosity' ins
tead.\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986579Z 0 [Warning] TIMESTAMP with implicit DEFAULT value is deprecated. Please use --explicit_defaults_fo
r_timestamp server option (see documentation for more details).\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986635Z 0 [ERROR] Failed to access directory for
 --secure-file-priv. Please make sure that directory exists and is accessible by MySQL Server. Supplied value : /var/lib/mysql-files\
n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986641Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting\n\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986653Z 0 [Note] Binlog end\n"           
exit code: 1                                                                                                    
process error: "Unknown error"                                                                                  
terminating service threads                                                                                     
terminating connection threads                                                                                  
stopping db process                                                                                             
Failed to remove Unix socket                                                                                    
Failed to remove runtime connection config file                                                                 
Application 'akonadiserver' exited normally...[/FONT]

There is a file called 'akonadiserver.error' in ~.local/share/akonadi. This constains:

Database process exited unexpectedly during initial connection! 
executable: "/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi" 
arguments: ("--defaults-file=/home/terry/.local/share/akonadi/mysql.conf", "--datadir=/home/terry/.local/share/akonadi/db_data/", "--socket=/tmp/akonadi-root.D8vrWA/mysql.socket") 
stdout: "" 
stderr: "mysqld: Error on realpath() on '/var/lib/mysql-files' (Error 2 - No such file or directory)\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986522Z 0 [Warning] The syntax '--log_warnings/-W' is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use '--log_error_verbosity' instead.\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986579Z 0 [Warning] TIMESTAMP with implicit DEFAULT value is deprecated. Please use --explicit_defaults_for_timestamp server option (see documentation for more details).\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986635Z 0 [ERROR] Failed to access directory for --secure-file-priv. Please make sure that directory exists and is accessible by MySQL Server. Supplied value : /var/lib/mysql-files\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986641Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting\n\n2016-10-15T13:49:17.986653Z 0 [Note] Binlog end\n" 
exit code: 1 
process error: "Unknown error" 
Failed to remove Unix socket 
Failed to remove runtime connection config file

I'm not really sure what that is telling me. There is no file or directory called 'mysql-files' in var/lib.

[acheron]

[B]sudo mkdir /var/lib/mysql-files[/B]

[TerryJC]

[B]sudo mkdir /var/lib/mysql-files[/B]

I did that and ran "akonadictl start" again. It is now working thanks.

One final question; why was that directory not there already? Kontact worked fine in 16.04. Has the configuration changed?

[sasha]

You do not need to start akonadi with sudo. It should just run as your user. So do "akonadictl stop", and start is as regular user to make sure it will all be good on the next boot

[TerryJC]

You do not need to start akonadi with sudo. It should just run as your user. So do "akonadictl stop", and start is as regular user to make sure it will all be good on the next boot

No, I realised that when I saw the console output.

When I subsequently got it working I omitted the sudo.

[Aries K]

Worked for me as well. Thank you for the fix. It's good to have Kontact/Kmail back.

[bendy]

Thanks. Helped me too. I have other problems however with kmail that I will post about separately.

[fastship]

I experienced an identical fault. Your fix seems to have resolved it.

[Melcar]

Just recently upgraded to 16.10. Creating the specified folder also worked for me.

[marco07]

Just out of my curiosity, I checked to see if such directory exist in my 16.04 installation. It was not. Should this be created in 16.04 too, despite Kontact & kmail working fine so far without?