Yeah, it stops on me a few times a month for no reason.

It happens more often when changing wifi locations.

Anyway, I guess to restart it, just type this in Xterm.

kill - 9 $(pidof modest)


For me though, the following is the script that I use.

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/modest/accounts/AccountID/enabled True
gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/modest/update_interval 1
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/modest/auto_update True
/usr/bin/modest