Hi,
I use BT Mail as my email provider and connect using IMAP via Kmail.
System details are:
Mageia 9 - Kernel 6.6.37 (64 bit)
KDE Plasma 5.27.10
About three weeks ago while it Kmail was syncing to the BT e-mail server all of my e-mails disappeared from the kmail default inbox folder while I was watching. Most e-mails in sub-folders are still visible, however some of these e-mails are also missing, mostly e-mails received in the last three weeks.
I have Kmail rules set up to sort incoming e-mails into various sub-subfolders which continues to work.
If I have the inbox open and receive an e-mail it will appear in the inbox and I can open, read and move it without a problem, however when Kmail next syncs with the server the e-mail disappears from the inbox and any subfolder that it may have been moved to, either manually or by the rules that have been set up to process emails.
To test if there was a problem with the akonadi database I installed Kmail on a separate PC, which has never had Kmail installed, and connected to the same BT mail server, when Kmail sync’d to the BT server the inbox was again empty therefore I feel that the problem is with the way the that Kmail is sync’ing with the Mail server as, although the inbox always fails to display old emails that are in the servers default inbox, the sub-folders sometimes display all, some or none of the emails that they contain.
I have connected to the same BT mail server account with the Thunderbird e-mail client and all e-mails show up correctly whether in the default inbox or any of the sub-folders
Has anyone else seen this issue in the last few weeks or have any resolution to the problem ?
Prior to this K-mail had been running correctly for the past 3 years without any changes being made.
I think I have found the problem ( while grabbing the above screen shot )
Auto Detect selects STARTTLS on port 143 but this seems to be causing the error, if I switch to SSL/TLS on port 993 the emails all appear correctly.
However I’m not sure why the problem initially started as no settings had been altered when the emails first disappeared, I had the Kmail main account default inbox up on a second screen and was working on a different screen and application when I noticed them disappearing from the inbox
The most reliable method to setup the encryption to be used when communicating with an e-Mail server is to, examine the Web-Site of whoever it is who is providing the service you’re using.
In your case it’s “BT” → (British Telecom??) …
On the web-site, search for e-Mail set-up – there should be a list of the IP addresses for the SMTP servers, IMAP servers and POP3 servers plus, the IP Port numbers and the encryption to be used.
<BT Email server settings>
IMAP settings
Incoming Mail Server: mail.btinternet.com
Port: 993, this should be automatically populated by selecting the SSL encryption
SSL Encryption: Enabled but not STARTTLS
SMTP settings
Outgoing Mail Server: mail.btinternet.com
Port: 465 (this may not be automatically populated on selecting SSL, so you’ll need to check)
SSL Encryption: Enabled (but not STARTTLS)
Thanks for the info, however I think that the problem may well have been with the BT server.
I have now been able to connect successfully, but I am seeing multiple copies of the the same e-mails in my inbox.
Logging directly into the BT Webmail service using Firefox I am seeing multiple copies of the same e-mails, in somes cases over 150 copies all with the same date and time some others are duplicated up to 10 times and others appear, correctly, only once.
These duplicates are also showing up in Kmail and Thunderbird therefore I think the problem is with the BT e-mail server rather than the clients.
Many of the duplicated e-mails show up in Kmail as greyed out and do not preview the text and are not selectable.
Upon further investigating I don’t believe the BT server is the problem.
Each time Kmail sync’s with the server it appears to create duplicate emails within the BT email server.
I have two BT email accounts so I tested this in two ways.
Deleting one of the accounts from Kmail - No more duplicate emails have been created for this account on the BT server.
Disabling the ‘Enable interval Mail Checking’ option in the second Kmail account setup - Afterwards e-mails are not duplicated on the BT server except when running a manual sync via ‘Check Mail’.
Therefore I think that there is an issue with sync’ing Kmail with the BT server which is somehow causing identical duplicates to be created with the same date and time created as the original email.
The only e-mails that are duplicated are those that are received in the current Kmail session. If the Kmail session is closed down then restarted the same email is not duplicated again, but the previous duplicates remain visible on the server.
My e-mail settings are shown below and a screenshot of the BT webmail site:
You enable “Download all messages for offline use”.
There’ll be copies retained at the IMAP server for use by other devices accessing that IMAP account in parallel to KMail.
