[TriLUG] Broken kmail in Debian sarge?

[David Rasch]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 10:54:51PM -0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
> I know that there are some Debian users on the list.  
> 
> I just installed Debian (sarge) for the first time last weekend.  Since then, 
> I have stumbled across a couple of programs that I had forgotten to install 
> (kuickshow, xemacs, etc.)  I used dselect to install them.  No problems.
> 
> This morning, I realized that I was missing xpdf.  dselect, choose xpdf, tell 
> it to install packages required by (and recommended by) xpdf.  Install.  
>
> Now, I was in a meeting at the time, so I was only half paying attention to 
> dselect.  I'm pretty sure that all I did was to select xpdf and resolve 
> through its dependecies.  I remember seeing that one library package was 
> being uninstalled because it is now deprecated and another one replaced it.  
> When the install step ran, I saw that dselect was installing a bunch of KDE 
> apps.  I was running KDE at the time, but I'm not sure whether that could 
> cause the problem I'm seeing.

For starters, dselect is evil.  It's a user interface nightmare.
Aptitude is much better, but both are clunky and hard to understand (in
my opinion).  If you want to get pissed and frustrated with debian,
continue using dselect.  On the other hand if you just want to install a
package, like xpdf, just run "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get
install xpdf".  You can get information that dselect provides, like
descriptions, by typing "apt-cache show xpdf" and you can also search
for a package with "apt-cache search <string>".  Finally, you can debug
what version of a package are available with "apt-cache policy
xpdf".  Your next best friend is http://packages.debian.org

> I have rebooted the machine since then.  I can boot up and log into KDE fine.  
> I use a Konsole and browse slashdot with Konqueror.  I can open KMail, but 
> when I attempt to access IMAP over SLL, I get an error dialog that says 
> "Could not start process for newimap".  This worked just before I installed 
> xpdf.  
> 
I haven't run into this problem, but KDE 3.3 just went into Sarge last
night and it wouldn't be unheard of for a bug like this to sneak in
(check http://bugs.debian.org/kmail).  At the same time, I would try
"apt-get --reinstall kmail" and if you can remove it and reinstall it
("apt-get remove kmail" and "apt-get install kmail).  Note: I haven't
checked the dependencies to see if this will work or not.

-David
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