Evolution starts as if it was the first time (with settings wizard)

[Ari Torhamo]

Binary package hint: evolution

When I start Evolution, it behaves as if it was the first time, and presents the settings wizard, although I've been using the program for a long time now. When I start Evolution from the command line, the message "EI: MAIL PREFS" is shown. Update: When I started a new Ubuntu session, and changed the language from Finnish to English, the command line showed the following, more verbose message:

** (evolution:2545): CRITICAL **: categories_icon_theme_hack: assertion `filename != NULL && *filename != '\0'' failed
EI: MAIL PREFS

I can't tell if there's anything missing from the .evolution folder, but at least my messages seem to be there, and also the config folder with a bunch of configuration files.

I'm using Ubuntu version 10.10 (64-bit), to which I upgraded from 10.04 about a week before the problem came up. Evolution version number is 2.30.3-1ubuntu7. File system check says everything's OK.

Somewhere around when this happened I temporarily run out of disk space, but took care of that almost immediately. I'm not sure about timing, so there may have been plenty of time between these two incidents.

Bug #327503 has similar symptoms, but probably different origin.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Thank you for opening this bug and helping make Ubuntu better. Although bug 327503 is a slightly different scenario, it sounds plausible that something similar may have happened here (running out of disk space *may* cause unexpected problems -- it all depends on what was being tried to be written to disc at the point of failure, or shortly after).

Now, it is interesting that you get the the setup wizard when you start. This suggests that ~/.gconf/apps/evolution is partially, or totally, corrupted. Of special interest would be the file ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/%gconf.xml -- this is where the accounts reside.

You should be able to browse this file via any editor. Look for lines starting with "&lt;account name=&quot;" (<account name=") -- these should be the accounts you have set up (or had...).

Not sure what can be done here. We will go from there. But, a probable good option is to save the current '%gconf.xml', and simply recreate the account data.

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

Here is the content of my ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/%gconf.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
    <entry name="last_version" mtime="1287481220" type="string">
        <stringvalue>2.30.0</stringvalue>
    </entry>
    <entry name="version" mtime="1287013139" type="string">
        <stringvalue>2.30.0</stringvalue>
    </entry>
</gconf>

I assume something is missing...

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Yes, indeed. Pretty much *all* of Evolution's basic configuration... But I wonder what you used to edit the file. On 'gedit', for example, I see the full file. On 'xmlcopyeditor', I see pretty much what you posted...

Please try 'gedit', and 'less'.

What we are looking for should be like below:

 <entry name="accounts" mtime="1281451213" schema="/schemas/apps/evolution/mail/accounts" type="list" ltype="string">
  <li type="string">
   <stringvalue>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
&lt;account name=&quot;HGGDH&quot; uid=&quot;1266522774.18950.4@xango&quot; enabled=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;identity&gt;&lt;name&gt;C de-Avillez&lt;/name&gt;&lt;addr-spec&gt;<email address hidden>&lt;/addr-spec&gt;&lt;signature uid=&quot;&quot;/&gt;&lt;/identity&gt;&lt;source save-passwd=&quot;true&quot; keep-on-server=&quot;false&quot; auto-check=&quot;true&quot (...)
</stringvalue>
  </li>
(...)
 </entry>

Alternatively, you can try Applications/System Tools/Configuration Editor (or run, for the command line, 'gconf-editor', and navigate to the correct place (/apps/evolution/mail).

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

Gedit is what I used to open %gconf.xml. I tried Less too (now), but it didn't find any more information.

Gconf-editor shows a list of value names and values (21):

- "accounts" key has no value (there's a small square where the value should be)
- "default_account" key shows a string of numbers and my machine name
- "save_dir" key refers to a hard disk that I removed two months ago
- "signatures" key says "signature name="Created automatically"" [my translation from Finnish] followed by a string of numbers and my machine name
- other values don't seem to have any obvious connection to me or my system

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for evolution (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]