[solved] Akonadi and Kontact suite problems on ISO

[Rhonja]

I've run into some problems concerning akonadi and KDE-Pim on Maui 2.

Both are shipped with the ISO but none of the kontact programms like kmail or kalendar appear on the menu. If I start kontact with the shell, I get several errors about akonadi-problems, database issues and missing resources. Kontact starts eventhough but just to indicate that akonadi is not running and that "Akonadi control process not registered at D-Bus", "Akonadi server process not registered at D-Bus" and "No ressource agents found". This happens while running the ISO on an usb-stick.

After a fresh install everything stays the same. Akonadi and Kontact won't run, producing the above mentioned error messages. And even though all kontact-programms are installed, they don"t appear on the application launcher or menu.

I'm sure, there are several ways to fix this problems, but that is not my point. I just want to indicate that there might be one or more bugs on the ISO concerning this, which maybe should be fixed.

[leszek]

They don't appear in the menu on purpose.
If you want to use them you need to activate Akonadi first from the systemsettings -> plasma services.
After that they should work with Akonadi.

If you want them to appear them in the menu add them to it with the menu editor (accessible via right click on the menu button).
The editor also allows you to remove our customized menu and use the system one.

[Rhonja]

Thank you for the fast and accurate answer. Seems to work as you indicated, at least on the ISO. Installed I still have akonadi giving me a little fight, but that's okay and not the subject here.

So it's "works as intended" instead of a bug. Okay, deal.
Might you tell me, what's the philosophy behind that decision to disable akonadi and hide the kontact suite?

[leszek]

By default we ship thunderbird as we think it is a superior e-mail client which has a good calendar plugin.
Kontact suite is shipped for address handling and contacts basically.

[starbuck]

Akonadi and KDEPIM are under development for quite some time now after Plasma switched to Qt5.
There is also a successor being programmed called Sink + Kube.
Since it is a bit unclear how things will play out and there have been complaints about Kmail2 from KDE4 days with regards to stability, we decided to ship Thunderbird + Lightning Calendar Plugin as default, disabling Akondi then default for performance gain reasons.

Of course it should be easy to activate and get it running again.

[Gorreh]

By default we ship thunderbird as we think it is a superior e-mail client which has a good calendar plugin.
Kontact suite is shipped for address handling and contacts basically.

Hi
if so, you should add in Dolphin content menu service action to send e.g pdf file via Thunderbird
regards
gorreh

[kdemeoz]

If you want to use them you need to activate Akonadi first from the systemsettings -> plasma services.

Am i correct to infer from this that a standard installation of Maui would/should NOT have Akonadi enabled in Plasma Services?

I am very happy to not use the KMail/Kontact suite in Maui [& i have not tried to]. I tested it extensively back in Mint 17.x KDE4 a couple of years ago, & it caused me massive hassles with bugs & instability, + a very unfriendly unhelpful KDE Community when i asked about its faults. 

My post here now is because in my Tower's Maui, Akonadi IS enabled & running... i did not do this manually... & i had long wondered why this was happening. Should i / can i now safely disable it in Settings? I know that i could always just try it myself without asking, but i do not want to cause some damage if i have misunderstood & maybe it should really be running. 
   
   

[leszek]

If you use the calendar widget with holidays or other calendars akonadi might be necessary to grab the calendar stuff.

[kdemeoz]

Oh. If i decide not to bother with that [calendar widget holidays], is it then safe for me to disable Akonadi in Settings [ie, i won't actually crash Plasms5 / Maui]?

[leszek]

Yes it should be save.
Holidays in calendar should be independent from akonadi Btw. Only other vcal or ical resources need it.