Calendar folder through IMAP? (KDE Kontact)

[gracedman]

Interesting. Does that allow for read/write access or just read only. I didn't think we could make updates using the /home rather than /dav directory. I suppose that could be a KDE3 thing but I assumed it was Zimbra. Thanks - John

[lytledd]

Originally Posted by gracedman

Interesting. Does that allow for read/write access or just read only.

Both read and write.

Doug

[AndyWas]

@lytledd: Which calendar type did you choose from the "Add calendar" dialog? Your URI is identical in form to the one I entered (successfully) for "Calendar in Remote File". That works OK, what I can't get working is "GroupDAV Server", either for calendar or contacts.

Andrew

[lytledd]

Originally Posted by AndyWas

@lytledd: Your URI is identical in form to the one I entered (successfully) for "Calendar in Remote File".

That is indeed the type I used. I did some Googling and found a post from 2006 that stated that Zimbra was keeping an eye on GroupDav, but didn't plan on implementing it at that time.

Have things changed since then?

Doug

[gracedman]

We are successfully using CardDAV and CalDAV with Zimbra. These use custom KResources built by Trinity to communicate from Kontact to those Zimbra services. I do not know if GroupDAV is a separate protocol to those or just a way of referring to them in general but those two protocols are working for us - John

[AndyWas]

In my previous post Calendar folder through IMAP? (KDE Kontact) I showed how I could see contact and calendar items in Zimbra using the Cadaver command-line WebDAV client. This indicates both that Zimbra supports WebDAV, and that it is working correctly in my installation. GroupDAV is a subset of WebDAV, so it follows that that is also available.

Akonadi was supposed to gain GroupDAV support in KDE 4.5, but while GroupDAV contact and calendar resources are advertised, I am not sure they are working. However I can't find much info on how it should work. I get no error messages, but also no data, in Kontact if I add a GroupDAV calendar (either directly or via Akonadi) or a GroupDAV address book (Akonadi only).

In Evolution I can add a CalDAV calendar, though no luck with WebDAV address book. Unfortunately I don't have access to any other GroupDAV servers to see if the Akonadi issue (if there is one) is specific to Zimbra or general.

[gracedman]

By the way, I can confirm that Evolution does work with Zimbra for both calendar and address book but it requires several patches. I do not know if those patches are included in the latest release but you can find information here:
WebDAV Contacts - Gnome Evolution

[AndyWas]

I have found a workaround for Kontact / Zimbra connectivity via GroupDAV. I mount the contact or calendar resource on Zimbra as a davfs2 filesystem, and then treat it like a regular directory containing vCard or .vcf files.

The davfs2 package has to be installed. I added entries like this to /etc/fstab

http://localhost.localdomain/dav/test/Contacts  /home/andrew/contactsDAV        davfs   user,rw,noauto  0 0
http://localhost.localdomain/dav/test/Calendar  /home/andrew/calendarDAV        davfs   user,rw,noauto  0 0

This allows the GroupDAV resources to be mounted by the corresponding users ,and gives them read-write permissions. Mountpoints for contactsDAV and calendarDAV are created in the user home directory. There are a couple of davfs2 config files. There are globla versions in /etc/davfs2, but as these are individual user mounts it makes more sense to use the per-user versions in ~/.davfs2. In ~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf make sure the line

use_locks       0

is present and not commented out - without this I was unable to write back to GroupDAV. In ~/.davfs2/secrets you can store the username & p/w for the GroupDAV resource; this allows mounts to be scripted without requiring input of credentials. As this is in the user home directory privacy is maintained even though the file is plaintext.

http://localhost.localdomain/dav/test/Contacts  test    testtest
http://localhost.localdomain/dav/test/Calendar  test    testtest

Contacts
Create an address book of type "Personal Contacts" and use the local mountpoint as the directory name. This method has the slight disadvantage that the "lost+found" folder appears as a sub-folder of the Personal Contacts folder. If instead you select "KDE Traditional Addressbook", then "Folder" I found that each edit in Kontact produced a new version of the contact in Zimbra (and another identically-named version of the file in the davfs2 mount), although Kontact only displays the current version.

Calendar
I added a calendar of type "Calendar in Local Directory" and used the local mountpoint as the directory. NB Don't use "Local File" as Zimbra GroupDAV keeps each entry in a separate file (same goes for contacts).

For both calendar and contacts I was able to upload entries created locally in Kontact, as well as download from Zimbra. Entries are cached when Zimbra is offline, provided the davfs2 filesystem remains mounted.

Hat-tip to folks at Memotoo (even though they are French... ;-) ) for pointing me in this direction:-https://www.memotoo.com/forum/messag...idmessage=2313. It is a little bit cumbersome, but while native Kontact / Akonadi support seems flaky at best, if it actually exists at all, it will do for me.

Andrew