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List:       kde-bugs-dist
Subject:    [Bug 159634] kmail autosave function not saving at all after the
From:       Tim Holy <holy () pcg ! wustl ! edu>
Date:       2008-11-07 11:24:43
Message-ID: 20081107112443.BF07A130AA () immanuel ! kde ! org
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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159634


Tim Holy holy pcg wustl edu changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |holy@pcg.wustl.edu




--- Comment #7 from Tim Holy <holy pcg wustl edu>  2008-11-07 12:24:42 ---
With Kubuntu Intrepid packages (kmail 1.10.1), the autosave feature often works
for me.

HOWEVER, there is at least one serious problem with the design of this feature.
This can be revealed by doing the following (first, finish and send out any
in-progress messages or save them as drafts, because otherwise you will lose
all your work):
1. In konsole, navigate to ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/autosave
2. Type "kontact &"
3. In kontact, start a new message
4. Wait for the autosave interval---you will see output on the command line
when autosave executes
5. Examine cur/ for messages; you should see a file corresponding to your
in-progress message (at least on Kubuntu, that is; from the above it seems this
might not work for some people...)
6. Quit kontact. Wait a moment for it to really quit. Then restart kontact.
Your in-progress message should pop up in a composer window, suggesting that
all is right and good with the universe.
7. Quickly, in konsole examine the cur/ directory. You'll see it's _empty_. And
there's nothing in new/ or tmp/, either.
8. Before the autosave interval expires, quit kontact. Wait. Restart it.
Presto, you'll see that you've lost the in-progress message!

Aside from this systematic way to replicate the problem, I should also mention
that, over years of using kontact in KDE3, I've also lost in-progress messages
after a kontact crash, even ones that had been autosaved previously. It's
possible that these "bad" crashes always occurred in the first 1-2 minutes of
starting kontact (and thus before the first new autosave), but my memory does
not let me be sure of this. I wonder if it might be worth checking to see
whether there is a brief moment in which the old autosaved files are deleted
but the new ones are not written---if kontact crashes between those events,
work is lost.

So, to make autosave robust, kontact should:
1. at startup, stop deleting the files corresponding to autosaved messages, or
execute autosave immediately after reloading any autosaved messages---that way
if kontact crashes in the first minute or two after starting (something I've
seen happen more than once...), the user doesn't lose data
2. execute autosave upon quitting (that way any changes that have been made
since the last autosave are not lost)
3. in the middle of an autosave, insure that old autosaved files are never
deleted until after new ones are written


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