Kmail 2: Fix ‘Failed to fetch the resource collection’ error and get on with life

Not everyone uses the web to check their mail- though it certainly makes sense to do so.  If you are using KMail 2 in Kubuntu 11.10, you may have seen this error.

KMail encountered a fatal error and will terminate now.

The error was:

Failed to fetch the resource collection.

This error happened even when started the Kontact suite.  So, how are we gonna get this guy back to life?  We could run away from home into gentle and inviting arms of Thunderbird, or we could stick it out and raise the dead.  I found the answer in this thread for OpenSuSE users.  I’ll go ahead and give you two ways however, since navigating hidden files & folders in Dolphin might not be your cup of tea.

If you just need a hint, it’s all Akonadi related.  :)

Method 1

Open Dolphin and head to your home directory.  Find the configuration button on the top right, and enable ‘Show Hidden Files’.

Enable hidden files in Dolphin.

Now, let’s go hunt down those pesky Akonadi files that are causing all of this trouble.

Got to:

~/.config/akonadi/

…and delete everything in there.

Delete the Akonadi config files.

Now, navigate to:

~/.local/share/akonadi/

Delete the files here that start with ‘akonadi’.

Delete the akonadi_control and akonadiserver files.

Next, go to:

~/.kde/share/config/

Can you guess what you need to do here?  That’s right, get rid of ‘akonadi-firstrunrc’ and ‘akonadi_akonotes_*’.

Lastly, head over to:

~/.kde/share/apps/

Find Kmail2, and delete the folder.

Start Kontact or Kmail, and you are done!

Method 2

It’s always easier this way…

Open up a terminal.  You probably use Konsole.

Issue the following commands:

rm ~/.config/akonadi/*

rm ~/.local/share/akonadi/ak*

rm ~/.kde/share/config/ak*

rm -r ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail2/

And that’s it!  If you did everything right then you should be able to fire up Kmail and get back to work!

Navigating through the .kde folder (.kde4 on some distros) is a great way to familiarize yourself with the way KDE organizes it’s user settings in a home directory.

‘Til next time!