Unbelievable frustration

Dec 11, 2008 04:31

I just experienced quite possibly the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to me with linux. In fact, this may well be the first time I've seriously complained about it.

There is a 'feature', errr bug, in Kmail relating to smtp accounts. It used to be that if you queued email using one smtp server, you could change the smtp server by going into the settings and it would send all the emails with the new server you selected. Some time back, that changed and it would only send emails you queued after changing the smtp server settings using the new server. In other words, it was saving the server information in each message stored in the outbox. The only workaround is to open up each email (thus taking it out of the outbox) and requeue it. Due to the queuing order, and the fact that each email had to be handled individually, with many emails queued, the only way to get the job done correctly is to open them all at once (resulting in countless windows open) and then requeue them one at a time. Frustrating, but it works.

Fast forward to today. I spent several hours on the airplane from Abidjan to Paris catching up on back emails. I had numerous emails in my inbox that I was saving for a time that I could respond. Many of them related to Free State Project work that has piled up over the last couple weeks. I had queued up almost 30 emails to send. When I arrived, the internet connection here did not allow me to send email using my default SMTP server. So I began the process of changing servers. I opened all of the emails. When I requeued the first one, Kmail crashed.

When I reloaded Kmail, none of the emails opened with it...

Not only did I lose several hours worth of work, I don't even know what I did and where to go to recreate it.

After I figure out how to submit a bug report, I'm going to go to bed and pretend this never happened...

V-

linux, free state project, work, personal

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