After massive upgrade yesterday KMail refused to run

[GreyGeek]

and left a message it was because Akonadi could not start. So, I tried to start Akonadi in a konsole using
akonadictl start
and noticed the following segment in the error msg:

stderr: "mysqld: Error on realpath() on '/var/lib/mysql-files' (Error 2 - No such file or directory)

I opens Dolphin as root and created the mysql-files folder under /var/lib and tried to start the Akonadi server again. It started. and I was able to run KMail and read my email.

[NoWorries]

Hi GG,
I also encountered kontact not working and you will find at https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...Starting/page2, post 13 that kmail is included in the list of packages that cannot be installed.

Clivejo replied at post 14 that

You will just have to wait for KDE Neon to release installable packages for Kontact/KDEPIM

I certainly hope that it is not too long for KDEPIM to be upgraded as I sometimes think that updates should not be released until such problems are fixed. I can only assume that the developers know best.

[vsmmath]

Hi GreyGeek,
this happened to me also. I installed for the fifth time. Everything was working just fine. I saw in a forum to update and upgrade before attempting synaptic. I upgraded, all 570 MiB. After that I installed VLC and tried to check mail, Kmail was all broken. Could not fix it. But this time I had taken a clonezilla backup. re-installed. K Mail works fine. That is the reason I started a new thread asking is it worth upgrading. I am taking incremental backup this time.

[GreyGeek]

KMail was among the upgrades, all of which installed without failure. Adding the missing directory and restarting Akonadi fixed my problem. I don't use Kontact.

[vsmmath]

KMail was among the upgrades, all of which installed without failure. Adding the missing directory and restarting Akonadi fixed my problem. I don't use Kontact.

Ok, somehow I am not using Kontact, but Kmail started acting funny. I could not configure it to show mail in Inbox, and review. I got discouraged and reverted back.

[clivejo]

There are huge changes going on with Kontact/KDEPIM upstream at the moment, but saying that there are equally huge amounts of work going into taking those changes and getting them packaged. Debian have been working on qtwebengine which is needed by the new PIM. Jonathan published this chart on how it all fits together.

http://weegie.edinburghlinux.co.uk/~jr/tmp/PIM.png

[vsmmath]

I read that new release is for this month. My mistake, I just upgraded without any problems.

[Feathers McGraw]

I had this problem too, starting with the update before last. Was hoping today's update would fix it, but it still appears broken... I think it's an apparmor problem:

Aug 16 21:17:59 T440s kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1471378679.986:17): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback" pid=13089 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0

[GreyGeek]

Hi GreyGeek,
this happened to me also. I installed for the fifth time. Everything was working just fine. I saw in a forum to update and upgrade before attempting synaptic. I upgraded, all 570 MiB. After that I installed VLC and tried to check mail, Kmail was all broken. Could not fix it. But this time I had taken a clonezilla backup. re-installed. K Mail works fine. That is the reason I started a new thread asking is it worth upgrading. I am taking incremental backup this time.

Before every backup I create a btrfs snapshot of / and /home as a PRE. After the backuip I create another snapshot as a POST. If things are OK I eventually delete the PRE. If not I can pick from the PRE or revert to it. So far, I haven't had to revert. Every so often I mount my /dev/sda1 to /media/mnt and create another @ snapshot as @_bkup_date and @HOME as @HOME_bkup_date snapshot, and then delete the older bkups. If push comes to shove I can delete @ and @HOME and move @_bkup to @ and @HOME_bkup to @HOME,fix fstab, and reboot.

[GreyGeek]

I had this problem too, starting with the update before last. Was hoping today's update would fix it, but it still appears broken... I think it's an apparmor problem:

Aug 16 21:17:59 T440s kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1471378679.986:17): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback" pid=13089 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0

I had problems with apparmor in 14.04 and when I had a problem with it in 16.04 on an update a couple months ago I uninstalled it.

[marco07]

Well, today apparmor and two associated packages were uograded. However, kmail in Kontact is still non-responsive. All other components of Kontact work fine except kmail. Its already couple of days that i cannot access my email and have to use the web mail service.

[Feathers McGraw]

Marco, me too, still waiting for a fix. I think it's more likely to be the apparmor profile that ships with Kmail / Kontact / akonadi than apparmor itself. I'll have a rummage and see if I can work out which file is the problem.

[marco07]

Marco, me too, still waiting for a fix. I think it's more likely to be the apparmor profile that ships with Kmail / Kontact / akonadi than apparmor itself. I'll have a rummage and see if I can work out which file is the problem.

Please let us know if you come up with any solution.
Thanks!

[Feathers McGraw]

The problematic profile belongs to akonadi-backent-mysql:

sam@T440s:~$ dpkg -L akonadi-backend-mysql
/.
/usr
/usr/sbin
/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/akonadi-backend-mysql
/usr/share/doc/akonadi-backend-mysql/README.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/akonadi-backend-mysql/NEWS.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/akonadi-backend-mysql/copyright
/usr/share/doc/akonadi-backend-mysql/changelog.Debian.gz
/etc
/etc/apparmor.d
/etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld-akonadi
/etc/xdg
/etc/xdg/akonadi
/etc/xdg/akonadi/mysql-global.conf
/etc/xdg/akonadi/mysql-global-mobile.conf

I added this line to /etc/apparmor.d/local/usr.sbin.mysqld-akonadi:

/etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback r,

Now I don't see apparmor complaining, but kmail/kontact still doesn't work. I reckon kmail was trying to access the fallback mysql configuration because something else doesn't work.

/etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback is the same as /etc/mysql/my.cnf, for what it's worth...

[marco07]

Well, I will wait a while for a fix from upstream before messing around with my system.
Thnx!