Quick tip: Slimming down Akonadi (EeePC)

If you're running a recent version of KDE on a netbook you might not like that the default setting for Akonadi (the new PIM storage running on MySQL embedded) has a default setting for ib_logfiles at 64Mb. If you have a look into ~/.local/share/akonadi you might see files like ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 (those two at least in my case) in the db_data subdirectory. You might also have seen the mysql.conf file in the parent directory. It then helps if you—unlike me—actually read the comments at the top of the file because you'd see the following:
# Global Akonadi MySQL server settings,
# These settings can be adjusted using $HOME/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf

If you try editing the mysql.conf under .local you won't get far, on every restart of Akonadi your changes will be removed and thus never used. If you use the proper file the content of the mysql-local.conf file will be appended to the settings in mysql.conf. The old values will thus still be in mysql.conf but their values overridden with your settings at the end of the file.
For now, my mysql-local.conf contains just:
innodb_log_file_size=2M

This belongs in the section [mysqld] but since that section is the only one in mysql.conf, it's not necessary here. Finally, open systemsettings and under Advanced you have Akonadi configuration, which has buttons on the server configuration tab for starting, stopping and restarting Akonadi.