kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't -- SOLVED

[dep]

okay, this one has me completely flummoxed.

it's a new install of 8.04; i'd have used 8.10 but i cannot abide kde4, at least not yet.

machine is an acer aspire one on which i appear to have all the hardware working except the card readers. wireless works fine. i can do the web, no problem.

i've set up kmail as i have it on another, working, notebook and on my desktop machine.

however. when i do a mailcheck it *instantly* reports "[hh:mm:ss]Transmission complete. No new messages." without bothering even to check. there is no network activity from the machine ruting the supposed "mail run." there is no error of any kind. and it does not get the mail.

this is contrary to other, identically configured -- i think -- machines on the same network.

any idea what i've missed here?

thanks in advance!

UPDATE AND SOLUTION: uninstall knetworkmanager. its only apparent function is to lie to kde applications. everything works just tickety-boo without it. kill it. burn it. sew salt on its ashes.

[Snowhog]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

From this machine, have you tried sending yourself an email and seeing if it "gets delivered" as expected? I'll assume that you setup both the POP and SMTP correctly? Can you send email from this machine?

[dep]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

yup. can send just fine. it's when checking for mail that it announces there is no new mail, but it does not bother even to check for new mail. no errors but no mail, either.

[dep]

Re: an additional clue

i installed fetchmail and did "$ fetchmail -c -u dep mail.host.com" and it prompted me for a password and in due course informed me that there was mail awaiting me. kmail, immediately thereafter, reported no mail and in fact did not even go to the mail server to look. i see no configuration option that would have any effect on this. it is extremely weird.

[jglen490]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

Not to doubt your intelligence, but when this happens to me (and it has!), it's usually something simple. I've put wrong stuff in the Settings->Configure->Accounts-> Receiving tab->Modify (or Add) button. Usually the Password or Host name is entered incorrectly. The Include In Manual Mail Check box is checked on mine (looking at it right now). Also, on the Extras tab, there is a Check What The Server Supports button, that is very helpful.

That's probably all very obvious, but that's what I checked the last time something weird happened in Kmail on a clean install. And it worked after fixing some errors I had.

[dep]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

alas, it's not that -- i've tried everything including copying the kmailrc from a machine on which kmail is working perfectly. anytime there's a misconfiguration, kmail has thrown an error -- password not accepted, etc. -- but in this case it *instantly* throws "transmission complete. no new messages."

meanwhile, fetchmail can make the connection just fine.

so it's something between kmail and the network that is screwing me up, i think. i just do not know what is between kmail and the internet.

[dep]

an important clue, maybe the answer?

in my looking around, i have just discovered on the working machines there
are text files, named ./kde/share/apps/kmail/dep:@pop.scpwildblue.com:110
which contain this:

downloadLater=
seenUidList=
seenUidTimeList=

and nothing more. okay, so i thought i would make such a textfile on the
acer, which hasn't one, and see what happened. only it would not let me
save a file by that name.

my guess is that this is the problem. what i cannot figure out is how i can
get one of these files. any ideas?

[dep]

nope, that wasn't it

i managed to touch the files, then fill 'em in with kedit and save 'em. no joy.

this is driving me crazy. well, okay, crazier.

[JohanLingen]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

I think this is caused by KMail thinking your network connection is offline.

Could you try to renew your connection? Use the networking icon in Systray or else use konsole to perform:

ifdown eth0
ifup eth0

Or maybe todays update to network manager fixed your problem?

[dep]

the plot thickens

well. just occurred to me to try it with the wired network -- and kmail performed perfectly. but on wireless -- nope, even though browsers, apt-get, etc., continue to work just fine.

is there a way to completely reinstall the network on this machine? might that do good?

any guesses, anybody?

[JohanLingen]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

I found this link: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=632104

It says that you might feel lucky by stopping and starting the Network Status Daemon system service. I am not sure what a permanent solution would be.
You might try to install another program to manage your wireless connections. Not sure if that makes any difference, but hey... it's free, as in free beer!

[dep]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't

yup, that seems to have done it: killing not the network daemon but the "network status daemon", whatever that is. and kmail works with the wireless. restart it, kmail still works with the wireless. reboot, kmail doesn't work with the wireless unless the "network status daemon is stopped and started again.

so, then, is there something bad happening in the order of boot events? to get on the wireless, i need to run RutilT after booting, select the appropriate "profile" (whereupon i'm propmted for my user password, not the network password), and then opera, apt-get, etc., work. (on my thinkpad, i need to run RutilT, but am not prompted for a password; also, kmail works without my having to fiddle with any "network status daemon" which is, btw, on in system services.)

so, thanks -- the scope of the mystery narrows. but it isn't solved.

[dep]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't -- SOLVED

solution: uninstall knetworkmanager. then everything works as it should.

[jglen490]

Re: kmail acts as if doing mail check, but doesn't -- SOLVED

Now that's two things about this problem that are really bizarre

1) That you couldn't create the dep:@pop.scpwildblue.com:110 file. It's just text with very simple permissions. In fact I entered

touch dep:@pop.scpwildblue.com:110

on my machine, and the filename entry appeared with no complaints. My equivalent file name is a just text with the same entries as you quoted and is editable with the normal set of text file editors (i.e., vim) with no special mojo.

2) Removing knetworkmanager shouldn't have any impact at all, unless there's a conflicting package that networkmanager can't sort out.

I think there may have been some other problem that is masked by the symptoms, above.

Well, it works and that's the desired result, but I would think hard before applying this as a solution.