Re: [Evolution] Evolution is dying

[Jimmy Montague <rhetoric101 hughes net>]

Actually, Adam, I've got Evolution open in front of me now and there IS 
no Help>About that I can locate. Got a hint? If you do, lay it on me.

Of course, I'm back on a Ubuntu system because Evolution didn't work on 
Mageia 4, either.

Component substitution is a legitimate, time-tested way to isolate 
hardware problems. Bench technicians all do it occasionally. Call it 
"quick and dirty" if you like, but it works. The fact is: if you can 
swap a component without changing symptoms, then you swapped the wrong 
component. If you swap every component on the motherboard without 
producing a change in symptoms, then your problem is either a) bad 
powersupply or b) bad motherboard or c) bad OS or d) bad software. On my 
old machine I swapped out everything, including the hdd, the power 
supply, and the motherboard and the OS-es.

Of course the components you use to test the machine must all be "known 
good," but I have no dearth of parts around here. And of course you have 
to disconnect from the network (if one is present) to check a machine in 
that way.

In this case, I swapped out everything including 3 OS-es (Ubuntu, 
Mageia, and Open Suse) I know my Internet access (HughesNet satellite 
broadband) is OK insofar as Web browsers in every OS I've tried work 
fine. Alternative mail clients work fine (You were right about T-bird. I 
must have forgotten to save. But you must understand that I'm going 
crazy trying to work this out.) Windoze 7 works fine on all accounts 
with two different mailers. I have your personal assurance that there's 
no virus at work here at my home. So what's left? The mail server 
itself, I suppose. How do I test that? I dunno.

I have several accounts, widely scattered. I use servers @ yahoo, @ 
googlemail, @ hotmail, @ outlook, @ hughesnet, and finally at my own Web 
space (which I rent from BlueHost, @ deksolomon.net.

T-bird works on every server EXCEPT @ deksolomon.net -- and that's the 
one server I really want Evolution to work with. FWIW: Evolution doesn't 
work @ hughesnet, either. I haven't tried it on the others.

FWIW: My Windoze 7 box uses a wonderful little mail client I stumbled 
across a few weeks ago. It's called PostBox. It's very small, it's very 
fast, and it's VERY smart. It's better than T-bird in several different 
ways. It looks like it was inspired by Outlook Express -- but with many 
more capabilities and without the MS bugs. It's not free, though. I had 
to pay $9.95 for it, so my banker will probably never forgive me. But if 
they ever port PostBox for Linux, I'll be first in line with another $9.95.

But after wracking my brains for 4 long days here at home, I'm tired of 
it all. I don't blame you if you're sorry you ever heard of me. So let's 
all of us find something else to do -- unless you think you can help?

Jimmy

On 05/29/2014 06:02 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 03:21 -0500, Jimmy Montague wrote:
> > Certain I was now chopping tall cotton, I booted Evolution and set up an
> > email account. That's when I found out that the problem was worse than
> > before. Evolution can lose passwords faster than I can type them in.
> The only way we can help with that is if you engage in some actual
> debugging - which is a *very* different practice than trial-and-error.
> <https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/Debugging>
>
> Trial-and-error is a *bad* way to solve problems.  Slow down and gather
> data.
>
> You also have yet to say the version of Evolution (see Help->About) [do
> *NOT* *NOT* *NOT* say the version of your *distribution*, that is *not*
> an answer to the question], what type of mail account, or using what
> provider.
>
> If the problem is this persistent it should be rather obvious what the
> problem is.   I just don't see this password-fail issue, so I can't
> offer any specific up-front suggestions.
>
> > Have I maybe got a virus of some kind on my home network?
> No.  Viruses that actually do anything like this exist only in people's
> imagination; stop thinking a-virus-did-it.  It is far far far more
> likely that your install is broken in some way, the network is just
> broken in some way, or your ISP is broken, or the mail server you are
> using is broken.  There are many ways for any of these things to be
> broken and exhibit aberrant behavior [and possibly they only *test* them
> when a web browser and outlook, and then call it a day -> building any
> aberrations inherent in those application into the network, then by
> their definition every else is "broken".]
>
> > Has anybody ever seen a mess like this in the history of the world? If
> > you have, please let me know. FWIW, I'm typing this message now on my
> > Gateway/Ubuntu/Thunderbird machine after I recreated the account that it
> > lost during my 8-hour absence from the keyboard.
> > Thanks for any advice, observations, etc. I've never had anything like
> > this happen to me before
> I've never had this happen to me in 20+ years of using LINUX as my
> primary platform [although, to be fair neither Evolution or Thunderbird
> existed then].  I cannot even recall ever loosing data due to
> Evolution... and that is since the 1.4.x days.
>
> > Now maybe some are going to think or say that I'm full of POOPOO and
> > these things aren't really happening. I'm only here because I'm a
> > Windoze troll raising hell with the Linux people. But it ain't so. I'm
> > here because I'm REALLY STUMPED.
> I have very little experience with Thunderbird - but I'd consider a
> disappearing account to be a major issue.  Maybe it never got saved in
> the first place.