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List:       kdepim-users
Subject:    Re: [kdepim-users] kmail: what it's doing...
From:       "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason () verizon ! net>
Date:       2007-04-06 20:27:52
Message-ID: 200704061627.53167.rtellason () verizon ! net
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On Friday 06 April 2007 14:46, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > > Unfortunately, doing it manually often means forgetting to do it at
> > > all.
> >
> > I don't see that as much of a problem.
> >
> > OTOH,  a bit earlier today I saw it "compacting" a folder here that
> > contains only archived material -- one which _never_ gets any smaller.
>
> What exactly did you see?  I've never 'seen' any compaction.

Right now,  in the status line on the bottom of my screen,  I see the 
message "Folder xxxx successfully compacted".  This is a folder that I just 
referenced a little while ago,  looking for a URL,  and which contains the 
correspondence I've had with one particular individual.  It doesn't need to 
be compacted,  and the software doing so is wasting my time because of the 
pauses I get when *I* want it to do something and it's bogged down with this 
other stuff.  Now down there I see "Folder sent-mail successfully 
compacted"...

But I'll hit a key to do something,  and see a nontrivial delay between me 
hitting the key (or doing something with the mouse) and the desired result 
showing up on my screen.  I'll see a significant lag in other areas as well.  
And I'm getting really tired of it.

If I were feeling a bit more ambitious,  I'd snag the source and have at it, 
ripping out a bunch of that crap,  but I don't really have the time to do 
that,  and will instead probably just switch to some other mail client...

> Are these folders mbox?  If they are, there's the answer to your problem.
> Mbox gets progressively slower as the files grow.  That's the reason I
> changed to maildir.

They're _all_ maildir,  which strikes me as being somewhat more robust.

> > Another example is when I want to highlight some text,  say I want to do
> > a search on it or whatever.  I can see from the status lights and the
> > delay involved that the machine is actually hitting swap when I
> > right-click in preparation to ctrl-C for copy.  WTH?
>
> Again, I'm not sure what you mean by saying that you can see that it's
> hitting swap.  Perhaps you could elaborate?

I right-click on some text that I've highlighted,  and there's a distinct 
pause while the HD light comes on and whatever bit of code that's supposed to 
handle things gets pulled back into RAM.  Or at least that's my assumption 
about what's happening.

> > > > > The problems of missing messages appear to be the result of your
> > > > > expiry settings.
> > > >
> > > > Those were only supposed to deal with _read_ messages,  not _unread_
> > > > ones, though.  Apparently there's something in there that "decided"
> > > > that some of the stuff was "too old" and just deleted them,  whether
> > > > I wanted it to or not.  Didn't get around to reading them yet?  Too
> > > > bad!
> > >
> > > I don't know what's doing that.l  It certainly doesn't do it here.  I
> > > have folders with mail in that date from 2005 - folders without expiry
> > > set, that is.  I never have unread mail for long, but if the problem
> > > existed here I would expect to have seen it.
> >
> > Well,  that's the thing -- it was unread mail.  I lost my connectivity
> > for a period of a few months,  and then I didn't have access to most of
> > my computer gear,  just this laptop.  And I wasn't real happy to fire it
> > up, seeing unread mail in that last batch of stuff I'd been able to
> > retrieve , and then watch as the software wiped it out before my eyes
> > before I had a chance to view most of it.
>
> I can't see that we are going to get anywhere with this one - you have no
> error messages or anything else that would help us know what's happening.
> All I know is that it's not normal.  I've never heard of anyone else having
> that problem.

I did find that the only folders that were affected this way were ones where I 
had set an expiry period for _read_ mail.  There's another checkbox in there 
for deleting _unread_ mail that's older than a certain amount,  I think that 
defaults to 30 days vs. the 7 day default of the other,  and I've _never_ 
checked that selection.  Why it should activate anyhow is beyond me.

> > > Maybe you are going to have to get a more technical answer, after all.
> >
> > Maybe I'm just going to have to switch to a different mail client,  and
> > stop using kmail.
>
> Your choice, but that will not help you to ever know what caused it.  It's
> not kmail's normal behaviour.  Something caused it.  How do you know that
> the same cause will not affect another application?  If it were me, I'd
> want to find the reason.

I don't know,  but if there's no way that I can turn some of this stuff off,  
and the only way to find things out would be for me to get into the source 
and try and figure it from that end,  then I'm not too likely to be able to 
do that any time soon because of time/energy constraints.  <shrug>

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin
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