[gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Daniel D Jones]

Recently started having problems with Composer, the editor of Kmail.  This 
only happens with the editor when I'm writing an email.  It doesn't happen 
when I'm just reading mail.  At random intervals, Composer will freeze for 
anywhere from fifteen or so seconds up to around 60 seconds.  When it's frozen, 
it's completely unresponsive.  Moving the mouse cursor over it causes the 
mouse cursor to disappear.  During this time, it doesn't even show up in top 
sorted by CPU usage.  I'm sure it's there, it's just not using enough CPU to 
make the top of the list.

I've tried recompiling Kmail without any success.  My guess is that it's 
trying to access some external resource and timing out, but I'm not able to 
determine what that might be.  Akonadi is running using the external MySQL 
server but everything seems to be running properly.  Checking with the 
Akonaditray "Test" button brings up no errors.  Spellcheck is working, and 
disabling automatic spellcheck does not fix the problem.  I'm not aware of any 
other external processes that Composer uses.

I tried to work around this by configuring Kmail to use an external editor, but 
Kmail still loads Composer.  When it does so, key strokes do not work properly 
- they seem to move the cursor around randomly but they don't enter text in 
the editor.  Resetting the editor configuration to the internal editor causes 
the editor to accept keystrokes properly but brings back the random freezing 
issue.  I suspect the freezes and the inability to use an external editor are 
separate issues but I'm not sure.

Any help on tracking down the cause is greatly appreciated.

-- 
"Chastity [is] the most unnatural of the sexual perversions." - Aldous Huxley

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Yohan Pereira]

thats odd im typing this from kmail.

whavt version?

-- 
- Yohan Pereira.

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Daniel D Jones]

On Saturday, October 09, 2010 14:38:16 Yohan Pereira wrote:
> thats odd im typing this from kmail.
> 
> whavt version?

1.13.5

I've been using Kmail for years and I don't believe there was an upgrade just 
before this started happening.  I suspect that it's something outside Kmail 
itself, some service it's trying to access, but I don't know what it would be.

Another clue is that it does a very similar thing when I press the Send 
button.  It freezes for about ten to fifteen seconds before sending.

-- 
"Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?" - Artemus Ward

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 23:42 on Saturday 09 October 2010, Daniel D 
Jones did opine thusly:

> On Saturday, October 09, 2010 14:38:16 Yohan Pereira wrote:
> > thats odd im typing this from kmail.
> > 
> > whavt version?
> 
> 1.13.5
> 
> I've been using Kmail for years and I don't believe there was an upgrade
> just before this started happening.  I suspect that it's something outside
> Kmail itself, some service it's trying to access, but I don't know what it
> would be.
> 
> Another clue is that it does a very similar thing when I press the Send
> button.  It freezes for about ten to fifteen seconds before sending.

I agree it's likely caused by some network resource, I get similar things 
happening to me (to use imap on exchange and it's addressbook from home I have 
to run ssh tunnels through to the exchange machines. It's *easy* to forget to 
run the script that sets them up)

Look for things like imap stores not available and the hard one to track down 
is accessing addressbooks using LDAP. The passwords are not stored in kwallet! 
Check your various KResources configs and grep for likely passwords in 
~/.kde4/share/config



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Mick]

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On Sunday 10 October 2010 08:06:08 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 23:42 on Saturday 09 October 2010, Daniel D
> 
> Jones did opine thusly:
> > On Saturday, October 09, 2010 14:38:16 Yohan Pereira wrote:
> > > thats odd im typing this from kmail.
> > > 
> > > whavt version?
> > 
> > 1.13.5
> > 
> > I've been using Kmail for years and I don't believe there was an upgrade
> > just before this started happening.  I suspect that it's something
> > outside Kmail itself, some service it's trying to access, but I don't
> > know what it would be.
> > 
> > Another clue is that it does a very similar thing when I press the Send
> > button.  It freezes for about ten to fifteen seconds before sending.
> 
> I agree it's likely caused by some network resource, I get similar things
> happening to me (to use imap on exchange and it's addressbook from home I
> have to run ssh tunnels through to the exchange machines. It's *easy* to
> forget to run the script that sets them up)
> 
> Look for things like imap stores not available and the hard one to track
> down is accessing addressbooks using LDAP. The passwords are not stored in
> kwallet! Check your various KResources configs and grep for likely
> passwords in ~/.kde4/share/config

No answers to your questions, but I can confirm that I occasionally get the 
same symptoms, i.e. during composing a new message or some times when I click 
on a new message to read it.  It takes up to 10-15 seconds before it becomes 
responsive again.  If I close the message composing window while waiting for 
the darn thing to unfreeze, the whole application crashes after the waiting is 
over.  Starting it up does not restore the composer and any text I had written 
is lost.

Unlike you I do not use mysql, but sqlite.  So I think that this problem is 
not related to the database.

Things that might cause it, although I cannot confirm any of these as 
definite, are kmail trying to connect to a mail server which for network or 
other reasons is unresponsive; trying to refresh CRL or gpg from pgp or smime 
key servers; compressing some of its own maildir folders.

I'm currently running stable:

$ kmail -v
Qt: 4.6.2
KDE Development Platform: 4.4.5 (KDE 4.4.5)
KMail: 1.13.5
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Daniel D Jones]

On Sunday, October 10, 2010 03:06:08 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Another clue is that it does a very similar thing when I press the Send
> > button.  It freezes for about ten to fifteen seconds before sending.
> 
> I agree it's likely caused by some network resource, I get similar things
> happening to me (to use imap on exchange and it's addressbook from home I
> have to run ssh tunnels through to the exchange machines. It's *easy* to
> forget to run the script that sets them up)
> 
> Look for things like imap stores not available and the hard one to track
> down is accessing addressbooks using LDAP. The passwords are not stored in
> kwallet! Check your various KResources configs and grep for likely
> passwords in ~/.kde4/share/config

I'm still looking and investigating.  No luck yet.

It doesn't appear to be a network problem for a couple of reasons.  I run my 
own mail server and it's sitting right here on my local subnet.  There's no 
problem communicating with it on either port 25 or 110.  (I don't use imap, so 
that isn't involved.)  Kmail itself doesn't exhibit any symptoms when I'm 
reading mail.  It's only when I have Composer open.

I'm not using LDAP or any sort of external addressbook, and I'm not sure why 
Composer would be accessing the addressbook while I'm in the middle of writing 
an email.  I can see it happening on either opening or closing Composer, but 
not mid sentence.  (Which, of course, doesn't mean it isn't happening.  I'm 
just not sure why it would.)

The only external resource I can think of that Composer would be accessing as 
I'm writing is the spellchecker and turning off automatic (ie inline) 
spellchecking doesn't mitigate the issue.

Is anyone using or tried to use an external editor with Kmail recently?  If 
not, would someone be willing to take a moment and attempt to do so and see if 
it works correctly for you?

-- 
"When you're through changing, you're through." - Bruce Barton

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 16:10 on Sunday 10 October 2010, Daniel D 
Jones did opine thusly:

> On Sunday, October 10, 2010 03:06:08 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > > Another clue is that it does a very similar thing when I press the Send
> > > button.  It freezes for about ten to fifteen seconds before sending.
> > 
> > I agree it's likely caused by some network resource, I get similar things
> > happening to me (to use imap on exchange and it's addressbook from home I
> > have to run ssh tunnels through to the exchange machines. It's *easy* to
> > forget to run the script that sets them up)
> > 
> > Look for things like imap stores not available and the hard one to track
> > down is accessing addressbooks using LDAP. The passwords are not stored
> > in kwallet! Check your various KResources configs and grep for likely
> > passwords in ~/.kde4/share/config
> 
> I'm still looking and investigating.  No luck yet.
> 
> It doesn't appear to be a network problem for a couple of reasons.  I run
> my own mail server and it's sitting right here on my local subnet. 
> There's no problem communicating with it on either port 25 or 110.  (I
> don't use imap, so that isn't involved.)  Kmail itself doesn't exhibit any
> symptoms when I'm reading mail.  It's only when I have Composer open.
> 
> I'm not using LDAP or any sort of external addressbook, and I'm not sure
> why Composer would be accessing the addressbook while I'm in the middle of
> writing an email.  I can see it happening on either opening or closing
> Composer, but not mid sentence.  (Which, of course, doesn't mean it isn't
> happening.  I'm just not sure why it would.)
> 
> The only external resource I can think of that Composer would be accessing
> as I'm writing is the spellchecker and turning off automatic (ie inline)
> spellchecking doesn't mitigate the issue.
> 
> Is anyone using or tried to use an external editor with Kmail recently?  If
> not, would someone be willing to take a moment and attempt to do so and see
> if it works correctly for you?

This is starting to look like strace -p is your good friend.

You'll get heaps of output most likely but at least there's a good chance we 
can pin down what resource it's trying to access.



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday 09 October 2010 19:22:57 Daniel D Jones wrote:

> Any help on tracking down the cause is greatly appreciated.

That's interesting. Here it's the other way round: on first logging-in to 
the desktop, with kmail saved as an application from the previous 
session, kmail takes for ever to get through its startup sequence, which 
includes fetching new e-mails via POP3. It's usually a few minutes 
before I can do anything with it. After that it's as responsive as any 
other program, and the composer is too. I've had the same problem with 
all recent versions as far as I remember; the current version here is 
kmail 1.13.5 in KDE 4.5.2.

(Not wishing to hijack your thread...) I doubt it's your problem, but I 
wonder if mine is the dreaded IPv6 lookup problem raising its ugly head 
again.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday 09 October 2010 22:36:42 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday 09 October 2010 19:22:57 Daniel D Jones wrote:
> 
> > Any help on tracking down the cause is greatly appreciated.
> 
> That's interesting. Here it's the other way round: on first logging-in to 
> the desktop, with kmail saved as an application from the previous 
> session, kmail takes for ever to get through its startup sequence, which 
> includes fetching new e-mails via POP3.

Since the upgrade to KDE 4.5.2 last week this problem might have been 
fixed, though it's early days yet.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

Re:Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail editor freezes

[桂川军]

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At 2010-10-10 18:35:24，"Peter Humphrey" <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote:

>On Saturday 09 October 2010 22:36:42 Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> On Saturday 09 October 2010 19:22:57 Daniel D Jones wrote:
>> 
>> > Any help on tracking down the cause is greatly appreciated.
>> 
>> That's interesting. Here it's the other way round: on first logging-in to 
>> the desktop, with kmail saved as an application from the previous 
>> session, kmail takes for ever to get through its startup sequence, which 
>> includes fetching new e-mails via POP3.
>
>Since the upgrade to KDE 4.5.2 last week this problem might have been 
>fixed, though it's early days yet.
>
>-- 
>Rgds
>Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
>

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