[CalendarServer-users] Q: Usable docs for installing/configuring calendar and contacts server?

[Andre LaBranche]

Hello,

Your appraisal of our documentation is fairly accurate. Incase you haven’t seen what we do have, it’s here:
https://trac.calendarserver.org

The server’s main config file and the comments therein are the best single location of information about the server’s high-level capabilities and how they are configured. Be aware that there are many more plist keys than appear in caldavd.plist; the defaults come from the file twistedcaldav/stdconfig.py for the version you’re using. You said 2.4, so I should mention that 2.4 is ancient.

I might suggest that you use our “sandbox” to get started; it’s easy because it’s all preconfigured with a basic and generic config, so you can just fire up the service and immediately start kicking the tires. At least in theory...

Satisfying all of Calendar Server’s external software dependencies can be tricky sometimes, given the great variety of OS vendors, versions, and configurations that exist in the world. We do our best with the “run” script, and it works well on OS X, but elsewhere it’s hit or miss for the same reason that package / port makers never run out of work.

I spent a few minutes with Ubuntu 12 LTS today and arrived at a fairly simple process for getting our trunk code running. Start with two sets of apt-get invocations to load up some dependencies:

sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion checkinstall python-setuptools python-xattr python-twisted subversion curl libreadline-dev libffi-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep postgresql python-ldap

From this point, the QuickStart guide can take over. You should be able to check out our code using svn and use the ‘run’ script to run it. Look through conf/caldavd-dev.plist (which it will prompt you to create from a template)

We also have various command line tools for managing and interacting with the server and data. Use these tools (in the bin directory) through our “python” wrapper script, which sets environment variables to pick up dependencies “run -s” fetched that are not installed system wide. An example command line tool usage is shown below, showing the help of the calendarserver_manage_principals tool:

andre at server:~/trunk$ ./python bin/calendarserver_manage_principals -h
usage: calendarserver_manage_principals [options] action_flags principal [principal ...]
       calendarserver_manage_principals [options] --list-principal-types
       calendarserver_manage_principals [options] --list-principals type

  Performs the given actions against the giving principals.

  Principals are identified by one of the following:
    Type and shortname (eg.: users:wsanchez)
    A GUID (eg.: E415DBA7-40B5-49F5-A7CC-ACC81E4DEC79)

options:
  -h --help: print this help and exit
  -f --config <path>: Specify caldavd.plist configuration path
  -v --verbose: print debugging information

actions:
  --search <search-string>: search for matching principals
  --list-principal-types: list all of the known principal types
  --list-principals type: list all principals of the given type
  --read-property=property: read DAV property (eg.: {DAV:}group-member-set)
  --list-read-proxies: list proxies with read-only access
  --list-write-proxies: list proxies with read-write access
  --list-proxies: list all proxies
  --add-read-proxy=principal: add a read-only proxy
  --add-write-proxy=principal: add a read-write proxy
  --remove-proxy=principal: remove a proxy
  --set-auto-schedule={true|false}: set auto-accept state
  --get-auto-schedule: read auto-schedule state
  --set-auto-schedule-mode={default|none|accept-always|decline-always|accept-if-free|decline-if-busy|automatic}: set auto-schedule mode
  --get-auto-schedule-mode: read auto-schedule mode
  --set-auto-accept-group=principal: set auto-accept-group
  --get-auto-accept-group: read auto-accept-group
  --add {locations|resources} 'full name' [record name] [GUID]: add a principal
  --remove: remove a principal


Hopefully that answers some of your questions. If you like tinkering, there’s lots to play with. If this all sounds like too much work, the easy mode costs $20 (assuming you have a mac to host it on).

Cheers,
-dre

On Aug 16, 2013, at 2:07 AM, Petr Blavov <petrblavov at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> I'm trying to get a CalDAV and CardDAV server running on Ubuntu 12.04LTS and following many recommendations on the web, I wanted to do this with the Darwin calendar and contacts server. But I can't find usable documentation on the configuration of this package anywhere - nothing more that a few howto-like posts explaining how to setup very specific configurations without explaining in any more detail why you should do what they're saying. I'm actually astonished to encounter a seemingly widely-used open-source software without even the most basic description of the layout of configuration files or the available commands/options etc. 
> 
> Therefore, I'm trying my luck here: 
> 
> I wanted to use the calendarserver included in Ubuntu 12.04 (which, if the package version is correct, installs calendarserver 2.4) to get the follwing setup:
> A small number of users, each with a personal calendar, plus one calendar sahred by the whole group
> A small number of CardDAV address books, readable and writable by either the whole group of users or just a single one
> Can anybody tell me how to configure the various files to archieve this setup. Should I use the 2.4 version provided by Ubuntu or should I go and install a newer version from the repository (and if the latter, how do I go about it after downloading the files)? Any pointers to a more complete documentation I might have missed are very much appreciated, too. 
> Thank in advance for any help on clearing up my confusion. :-)
> Cheers, Pit
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