Help trouble-shooting: Synchronize appointments from remote calendar

[greenrenault]

G'day

I need some help trouble-shooting the creating a new Calendar and using the feature "Synchronize appointments from remote calendar".

When I try to add the URL for the "Synchronize appointments from remote calendar", Zimbra responds with the error: "The following URL is not currently unreachable".

I already have 6 other calendars created which synchronise from the same base URL (same host name but different path to ics), however I just cannot add any new calendars. We recently moved the Apache server hosting the calendars onto the Zimbra server so I expect it is something to do with that recent change that is the problem. It is weird that the old calendars still work though, just cannot create new ones.

The remote calendar we want to access is located on the same Linux server, but a different Apache installation. The URL used is accessible from my workstation and from the command line on the Linux server hosting Zimbra.

Does anyone know if there are Zimbra calendar logs I can view to find out what the actual error is?

Thanks in advance!

[jholder]

Originally Posted by greenrenault

(same host name but different path to ics)

That tells me that there is a permissions issue on the calendar you're attempting to share.

Have you made that particular calendar publicly accessible?

[greenrenault]

Originally Posted by jholder

That tells me that there is a permissions issue on the calendar you're attempting to share.

Have you made that particular calendar publicly accessible?

G'day

It's definitely not a permissions problem, it's a problem parsing the ICAL files. If I re-write the ICAL file with a single, simple entry then Zimbra loads the calendar. However, when I do revert back to the auto-generated ICAL file, Zimbra returns a generic error.

As a sidenote, KOrganizer can open the auto-generated ICAL files without error (same content and URL).

Again, is there anywhere in the logs I can look which indicates what exactly is wrong with the ICAL file?

I'll keep trying to track down the exact error within the ICAL file by trial/error.

Justin

[greenrenault]

Great news, found the problem.

The ICAL UID attribute for each ICAL file must be UNIQUE for all of the remote calendar / synchronized appointments. This must have changed in Zimbra in the 4.5x updates as it was previously working OK.

I tracked this problem down by performing these steps:
1. I could create a remote calendar for ICAL #1. Zimbra displayed the calendar.
2. When I tried to create a remote calendar for ICAL #2. Zimbra returned an error: "The following URL is currently unreachable" (not a very useful error message by the way!).
3. Checking the source for ICAL #2 I noted that the UID's were the same as for ICAL #1. Since these files are auto-generated this was just a number sequence from 0 to whatever.
4. I then made the auto-generated UID for each ICAL unique to that ICAL file (just appended the filename did the trick).
5. Again attempted to create a remote calendar for ICAL#2, #3, #4, #5, #6 etc. And Zimbra displayed the calendar without error, all worked OK.

So the lesson here is that if you want to use Zimbra and remote calendars / synchronisation then you MUST ensure that the UID for each remote calendar you have subscribed too is unique. Otherwise Zimbra will exit with an error on creation.

I guess in Zimbra the UID is being used as a global UID, ie. must be unique across all of the subscribed calendars. Whereas in all other ICAL based software I've used the UID only needs to be unique within the ICAL file itself.

Anyway, hope this helps someone else out there.