First off, the term "shared calendar" is quite overloaded, and means different things to different people.
Dear all,
I managed to install a calendar/contacts server on debian using the
nss-plugin for authentication. I have two questions on using the
server. Posts on this list related to this are quite old and I'm not
sure they still apply.
Speaking of old things, the NSS directory backend in question is 10 years old, and references a version of CalendarServer that is also 10 years old. So... that could be problematic, even if only because I'm not sure how much I can remember about CalendarServer version 1.2.
1) The documentation of the nss-plugin states:
Shared calendars are represented by groups
of users. The group name must start
with groupPrefix to avoid collisions with system users -
the default is
caldavd-. The members of these groups are allowed to
read/write the calendar.[1]
I created a group caldavd-test and I'm able to se the group members
at
https://calendarserver:8443/principals/groups/test
Now, my question is:
how can users see the shared calendar? What is the correct url?
In general, the same as the url above, just swap "principals" for "calendars". Depending on the version of CalendarServer you are using, there might be some relevant CalendarServer settings, have a look at twistedcaldav/stdconfig.py for your version to learn the available settings (just search for "group") and conf/caldavd-stdconfig.plist which shows all the options in plist format, but only for newer versions.
I seem to recall that in very old versions of CalendarServer, people were able to achieve some kind of 'group calendar' situation by essentially just changing the calendar home URL in a user's client to that of some shared collection. This was never really an intended usage pattern, so I don't have much experience with that workflow.
2) How can users share calendars with other users when using
Thunderbird as user-interface?
I don't know, but I do know that any user-initiated form of sharing (via
delegation / proxy, or "
calendar sharing") is different from what the NSS backend is doing (via manipulation of user and group records). I suspect Thunderbird implements the proxy stuff, but not sure about the newer 'sharing' model. The proxy method works on an account-wide basis, and allows a user to make all of their calendars available to another user (the other user doesn't have to do anything), whereas the 'sharing' method is per-calendar, and uses an invitation / response loop to bind the shared calendar into the other user's calendar home - both users must take action to instantiate this kind of sharing.
Good luck :)
-dre