kmail won't retrieve messages

[wildredzebra]

I have a fairly standard install of Fawn on a laptop (HP Pavillion dv8000). I have been using kmail/kontact as my email application, both on my laptop and my desktop. I started experimenting with an alternate setup involving postfix, fetchmail, procmail, and alpine (Pine has actually been my preferred mail application for some years, but I started playing with kmail when I installed Kubuntu). The next time I tried using kmail, it wouldn't download new messages. It would send messages just fine, but wouldn't retrieve them. In the notification bar I see "Transmission complete. No new messages.", but nothing else happens.

I've tried the following actions with no success:

1. Remove postfix, procmail, fetchmail, pine. I even rebooted to make sure no threads from any of these applications were left behind and running.

2. Making sure it wasn't a kmail user configuration issue. I removed all the kmail and kontact-related items in the .kde subdirectory and starting over. I even created another user on the same box and had the same issue.

3. Purge kmail/kontact completely from the box and reinstalling.

4. I've done an strace on the application and compared it to my desktop and don't see any relevant differences.

5. I've compared the setup and configuration of this box to my desktop where kmail still works and don't see any relevant differences.

6. At one point I even blew away Kubuntu and reinstalled the whole thing from scratch. At this point kmail works. However, simply installing postfix and removing it causes kmail to cease functioning correctly.

At this point I am a bit tired of fighting it. I have installed Thunderbird and that works flawlessly. Since the only component of Kontact that I even use is kmail I am not sure whether it is worth much more time to debug it. I throw this issue to the group for comments and suggestions.

I have done web searches and see a few references to others having similar issues but have not seen any final resolution or troubleshooting steps to take.

What do you all think?

[davidlondon]

Re: kmail won't retrieve messages

Hi,

Ok, postfix is an Mail Transport Agent (MTA) so it will fetch your mail via pop3 and put it in you 'local' mail box which is in /var/spool/mail normally-i have not messed around with postfix in years-you don't need it-kmail does all the work.

smtp-is outgoing so yes as postfix does not bother with that kmail will send, pop3 is incoming-so as long as you have your pop3 account setup properly in kmail there should be no problem getting that email from your isp. The account on kmail should be a pop3 account-not local mail box.

try sudo apt-get clean to get rid of all old files from your system, recheck your settings on kmail and send yourself some test emails from hotmail/yahoo until you get it working.

[opie]

Re: kmail won't retrieve messages

When this happens do you also have trouble connecting out with konqueror?

In my case I am still stuck on dial-up and I had the issue you describe. The solution for me was to stop and restart the network status daemon because the kde apps didn't seem to register the fact that I was connected but kept my status offline.
If this is your problem as well your service manager is in your system settings/advanced tab. Just click on the network status daemon in the service manager, stop it and start it again.