zimbra/thunderbird with lightning 0.3 problem

[urban@abak]

hello again...

we have a certain problem about creating/exporting appointments in zimbra. the thing is that we create the appointment and after the invitation is sent and the invited user (who is using thunderbird + lightning 0.3) the date and time of the appointment is simply not correct. it's always january 1st 1970 1:00:00... if we open the file in notepad it looks sth like this:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:Zimbra-Calendar-Provider
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:REQUEST
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:(GMT-08.00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) / Tijuana
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:16010101T020000
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
RRULE:FREQ=3DYEARLY;WKST=3DMO;INTERVAL=3D1;BYMONTH=3D10;BYDAY=3D-1SU
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:16010101T020000
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
RRULE:FREQ=3DYEARLY;WKST=3DMO;INTERVAL=3D1;BYMONTH=3D4;BYDAY=3D1SU
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:(GMT+01.00) Amsterdam / Berlin / Bern / Rome / Stockholm / Vienna
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:16010101T030000
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
RRULE:FREQ=3DYEARLY;WKST=3DMO;INTERVAL=3D1;BYMONTH=3D10;BYDAY=3D-1SU
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:16010101T020000
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
RRULE:FREQ=3DYEARLY;WKST=3DMO;INTERVAL=3D1;BYMONTH=3D3;BYDAY=3D-1SU
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:338764a9-8f50-479a-9ef4-4021cf45d222
ORGANIZER:MAILTO:mail1@domain1.com
SUMMARY:Testr56
DTSTART;TZID=3D"(GMT+01.00) Amsterdam / Berlin / Bern / Rome / Stockholm / =
Vie
 nna":20070117T133000
DTEND;TZID=3D"(GMT+01.00) Amsterdam / Berlin / Bern / Rome / Stockholm / Vi=
enn
 a":20070117T143000
LOCATION:
STATUS:CONFIRMED
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INTENDEDSTATUS:BUSY
TRANSP:OPAQUE
ATTENDEE;CN=3Atendee;PARTSTAT=3DNEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=3DTRUE;ROLE=3DRE=
Q-PARTICI
 PANT:MAILTO:mail2@domain2DTSTAMP:20070108T120655Z
SEQUENCE:0
DESCRIPTION:Sledi zahteva po novem sre=C4=8Danju:\n\nZadeva: Testr56 \nOrga=
nizato
 r:: Organizer <mail1@domain1.com> \n\nTermin: Sreda\, 17 januar 2007\,=
 1
 3:30:00 - 14:30:00\n \nPovabljeni: Atendee <mail2@domain2.com=
>=20
 \n\n*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*\n\n
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

i guess the problem is that time is not UTC format or sth. is there a way to solve this at all? also i'm guessing this is a zimbra problem because it works all other ways, for example outlook to zimbra, outlook to thunderbird...

any help would be kindly appreciated. thanks.

[jhahm]

Hi, that .ics file looks just fine. There's an extra VTIMEZONE block for US/Pacific, but that shouldn't be a problem.

I suspect Lightning has a bug in timezone handling. You mentioned Outlook to Zimbra or Lightning works fine, and that's probably because Outlook is using UTC times and both Zimbra and Lightning handle that case correctly. Zimbra to Outlook should work too because Outlook handles non-UTC timezones. But it sounds like Lightning has some trouble.

[urban@abak]

yes, your description sounds just right. i also thought first that it is a lightning problem. so i guess, if zimbra could export/send in UTC time format, lightning would work too? is there a way to change that in zimbra?

[jhahm]

No. And in general you can't express everything in UTC, for example a recurring appointment in a timezone that uses daylight savings. Let's hope Lightning fixes the bug...

[pacsteel]

we have a certain problem about creating/exporting appointments in zimbra. the thing is that we create the appointment and after the invitation is sent and the invited user (who is using thunderbird + lightning 0.3) the date and time of the appointment is simply not correct. it's always january 1st 1970 1:00:00...

urban@abak, If this is a Tbird/Lightning bug (as it appears to be) then try upgrading to a newer version of lightning than 0.3. I'm running Lightning 0.4a1 (build 2006112111) with tbird 1.5.0.9, and I could not reproduce your issue. My appointment's date and time were entered into Lightning correctly.

[urban@abak]

urban@abak, If this is a Tbird/Lightning bug (as it appears to be) then try upgrading to a newer version of lightning than 0.3. I'm running Lightning 0.4a1 (build 2006112111) with tbird 1.5.0.9, and I could not reproduce your issue. My appointment's date and time were entered into Lightning correctly.

hm... where did you get this?

[phoenix]

hm... where did you get this?

Nightly build on the Lightning site.

[pacsteel]

hm... where did you get this?

What bill said. I think. It has been long enough that I don't really remember how I got there, but I think it was in ftp.mozilla.org\pub\mozilla.org\calendar\lightning \nightly\latest-trunk\windows-xpi

[urban@abak]

interesting, i'm getting a non-compatibility error... it says that lightning 0.4a1 only works with thunderbird 3.0a1...

[phoenix]

You've downloaded the wrong version, you want the version for T'bird 1.5 or 2 a bit further down the page.