I've read about backtraces, core dumps, and using gdb.
I'm no
programmer, so what is the best way for me to
troublesoot? $ gdb (gdb) file /usr/bin/kmail (gdb) run
<trigger the crash> (gdb) bt <you obtain the backtrace>
I don't know if this will be enough, but I'm not an expert debugger :).
I gave that a go. gdb reported that kmail exited normally. With some trial and error testing, I copied /usr/bin/kmail and /usr/lib/libkmailprivate.so from my Slackware 12.2 package and then the problem disappeared. At this point I can only guess that something in the kmail composer code does not compile correctly and instead causes the entire app to close rather than just the composer window.
Darrell
You may need to try something like this: gdb --arg kmail --nofork
kmail is just a kdeinit executable that will normally exit as soon as the GUI is loaded unless forced not to.
Tim