Kontact fails because akonadi not operational

[NoWorries]

This problem has been reported and Piotr has proposed a solution, but it doesn't work for everybody. Besides, since I use mysql for other things, I do not want to replace it with something called mariadb, whatever that may be.

I found that the approach given by Piotr worked in the pre-release stages of Vivid, but failed when I installed the released version of Vivid.

I tried various approaches and in the end I decided to take the risk and, from what I can remember, I copied the directories:

.config
.kde
.local

from my Utopic system to Vivid. I did this when Vivid was not running. When I booted up Vivid, I had to reconfigure my desktop. Fortunately, after all of this I was able to launch Kontact without any errors and I had all the Calendar, Contacts, To-do List, Feeds and Popup Notes working with all the entries that I had entered on my Utopic system.

I have given up trying to work out where Kontact keeps all its files and it was for this reason I decided to take the plunge and do the above. I hope I have not forgotten all the hidden files that I copied. If in any doubt, it won't hurt to copy others if you think Kontact "may" use them. After all, as I have a separate Home partition, I would be installing Vivid into that. I have not currently taken his step, so I wanted to simulate what would happen if I did.

[joneall]

Not sure what you mean by self test, but I'm attaching the console output from the akonadiconsole command (including stderr).

[SteveRiley]

Would you please copy that self test report to the clipboard, then paste it into a reply here?

[joneall]

My screenshot got lost.

[joneall]

What happens when you click the Start button?

About the same thing I see when I try to start kontact.

[claydoh]

What happens when you click the Start button?

[joneall]

I installed the program, but when I run it, I get an error message "Failed to connect to database: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/akonadi-jono6kr71.mysql.socket' (2) QMYSQL: Unable to connect". I click "Ok" twice on that message before the window comes up. When it does, it looks identical to yours except for the name of the socket and that it says at the bottom "The AKonadi server is not running", with "not" in bold characters.

Should I do something?

[SteveRiley]

Please install the package akonadiconsole. Then run akonadiconsole from a console window. In the menu, choose Server -> Configure Server. Drag the bottom border of the window down to enlarge the window.

Does yours match this, or are the check boxes and fields filled in differently? If yours doesn't match, please post a screen shot.

[joneall]

I admit to being confused about mysql. Amarok also uses it, but seems to have its own copy hidden away. Is that correct?

[joneall]

Normally Akonadi runs an "internal" MySQL server and talks to it over a unix socket. Yours seems to be attempting to communicate with some other MySQL instance via a TCP port. Did you change Akonadi's configuration in this way?

Not that I know of. In any case, I have no idea how to do that.

Might a reinstall of mysql help? It's kinduv annoying to do, but perfectly possible.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[SteveRiley]

Normally Akonadi runs an "internal" MySQL server and talks to it over a unix socket. Yours seems to be attempting to communicate with some other MySQL instance via a TCP port. Did you change Akonadi's configuration in this way?

[joneall]

Yes, sure. I use mysql with Joomla. That has never been a problem.

[SteveRiley]

Akonadi uses a MySQL database for storing indexes and other metadata. Do you have another instance of MySQL running?

[joneall]

Ok, apparmor is gone. Probably a good thing. But kontact stilll does not work. Same error.

If I launch it from a command line, I get

$ kontact
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
jon@jon-desktop:~$ kontact
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
kontact(4631)/libakonadi Akonadi::AgentManagerPrivate::createDBusInterface: AgentManager failed to get a valid AgentManager DBus interface. Error is: 1 "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner" "Could not get owner of name 'org.freedesktop.Akonadi.Control': no such name"
Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QStr ing,QString,QString)
kontact(4631)/libakonadi Akonadi::SessionPrivate::socketError: Socket error occurred: "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
kontact(4631)/libakonadi Akonadi::SessionPrivate::socketError: Socket error occurred: "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
search paths: ("/usr/local/sbin", "/usr/local/bin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/bin", "/sbin", "/bin", "/usr/games", "/usr/local/games", "/home/jon/jon-files/bin", "/home/jon/jon-files/jon-perl", "/home/jon/jon-files/jon-bin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/local/sbin", "/usr/local/libexec", "/usr/libexec", "/opt/mysql/libexec", "/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin", "/opt/mysql/sbin")
Found mysql_install_db: "/usr/bin/mysql_install_db"
Found mysqlcheck: "/usr/bin/mysqlcheck"
Hspell: can't open /usr/share/hspell/hebrew.wgz.sizes.
kontact(4631)/kdepimlibs (kpimidentities) KPIMIdentities::IdentityManager::readConfig: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
kontact(4631)/libakonadi Akonadi::SessionPrivate::socketError: Socket error occurred: "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
kontact(4631)/kdepimlibs (kpimidentities) KPIMIdentities::IdentityManager::readConfig: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
kontact(4631)/kdepimlibs (kpimidentities) KPIMIdentities::IdentityManager::readConfig: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
kontact(4631)/kdeui (KAction) KActionCollection::setComponentData: this does not work on a KActionCollection containing actions!

... and about 10 times that more of the same sort of thing. Later

2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [Note] InnoDB: 5.6.24 started; log sequence number 2045922
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '*'; port: 3306
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [Note] IPv6 is available.
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [Note] - '::' resolves to '::';
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '::'.
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [ERROR] Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port: Address already in use
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on port: 3306 ?
2015-06-26 08:27:30 4716 [ERROR] Aborting

What's it doing with mysql?

[SteveRiley]

There are numerous reported problems (Google for the details) between AppArmor and various MySQL configurations. Frankly, the security layer provided by AppArmor is dubious at best; it's fairly easy to circumvent and the kinds of threats it protects against are quite uncommon in normal desktop usage scenarios. *buntu is one of the few distros that enables it by default. Debian, from which all *buntu flavors are derived, doesn't enable it. Thus, I disable it on all my machines:

sudo service apparmor teardown

sudo service apparmor stop

sudo apt-get purge apparmor