Calendaring / groupware
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Sander_Marechal Nov 04, 2008 9:46 AM EST |
Hi guys, I am looking (yet again!) into shared calendaring and groupware for Linux. I've been looking at a host of applications but I can't find what I am looking for. I need three things: * I want to run my e-mail on an IMAP server. Probably Dovecot since it looks really clean and easy to do. And it supports the maildit format which i definitely want (for easy backup purposes). * I'll need a webinterface for that e-mail. Though I'll be using Thunderbird 99% of the time it is really easy to be able to check your e-mail from a web interface while you out somewhere. Or your internet-enabled mobile phone. * I want shared calendars (iCal? CalDav? GroupDav?). My girlfriend and I both need to keep track of a lot of stuff. We each need our own calendar and we need a third calendar that we can both write to. * I need a webinterface for it as well, though mostly I will use the Lightning extension for Thunderbird * Maybe a shared address book (OpenLDAP?) but LDAP is complicated, no? At the moment we use an ODS spreadsheet in /home on our computer. There has to be a better way. The main function is not even to display e-mail addresses in our e-mail clients (that's a bonus) but simply to track e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers of all our friends. As I said, I have been looking at a lot of things like phpGroupWare, Kolab, Horde, etcetera but the all seem too... big. Too integrated. Too "enterprisey". I want simple. I want decoupled. What's even more troubling is that there doesn't seem to be stand alone calendaring applications to use. All of the webbased groupware interfaces (like horde) rely on standard services like IMAP and LDAP for mail and contacts, but they all implement their own CalDAV servers. I don't want my calendar data locked a the front-end application like The Horde or OpenGroupWare. It belongs in a separate, simple backend service. In a stand-alone CalDav server. Furthermore I could not find *any* stand-alone CalDAV or GroupDAV server (except for Apple's CalendarServer) and I could find no web-based CalDAV/GroupDAV client. With that I mean a simple web frontend that can display/update a calendar hosted on some other standard CalDAV/GroupDAV server. The only thing that comes close is PHP iCalendar but it only does iCal, not CalDAV and hence can only read and not update. I'm starting to feel that FOSS is dropping the ball on Calendaring. Can any of you suggest solutions for any or all of the above? PS: This is for my home so no Outlook/Exchaneg compatibility required. Only Thunderbird/Lightning compatibility. |
| jdixon Nov 04, 2008 10:46 AM EST |
For groupware, Carla seems to love Citadel, but I don't know how it handles calendars. You can find it here: [HYPERLINK@www.citadel.org] |
| alc Nov 04, 2008 2:31 PM EST |
Have you looked at Sunbird or Lightning? [HYPERLINK@www.mozilla.org] |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 04, 2008 5:06 PM EST |
@alc: That's just a client, not the server part. But it is what I intent to use as a desktop client. Thunderbird isn't perfect but I haven't found any mail program that works as good as TB does. I especially love the feature that I can force all messages to display as text/plain. I have an aversion to HTML mail. @jdixon: Citadel does it exactly the way I don't want it: Everything massively integrated and hoarded into their own datastore. So, once you're in then you're locked-in and only a big migration can get you out. I prefer something that follows the Unix philosophy: do one thing and do it well. Keep it all small, simple and interchangeable. Push integration to the outermost layers (in this case: The user-interface, like Horde or Thunderbird+plugins). The setup I am currently contemplating is this: Server: E-mail: Dovecot IMAP on a maildir store (maildir makes rsync backups easy) Calendar: Some kind of stand-alone CalDAV server. I have trouble finding one. Ideas? Contacts: I can't think of any alternative to LDAP. I heared LDAP is hard. Is it? I've also heared about CardDAV but that seems very experimetal at this point. Web clients: Horde seems nice, but it doesn't do CalDAV. It can create CalDAV calendars in it's own datastore but it cannot act as an interface to an already running, standard CalDAV server. @Mail also looks nice for e-mail (IIRC the latest version went FOSS) but I'd still need a stand-alone webinterface for contacts and CalDAV. It seems that there aren't any CalDAV webclients. Only servers. Desktop clients: Thunderbird + lightning. Are there any simple LDAP clients? Something that my girlfriend/mother could understand and use to manage addresses and phone numbers of friends? |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 04, 2008 5:22 PM EST |
Citadel will work with any client that supports standard calendaring protocols, so Kontact would be perfect...Thunderbird with Lightning should work too. Citadel seems like the likeliest choice for you, and it's GPLv3. |
| krisum Nov 04, 2008 5:59 PM EST |
Maybe Kolab will work for you ([HYPERLINK@www.kolab.org]), but it uses Cyrus for email and calendaring so not sure if dovecot can be plugged in there. Both kontact and thunderbird (synckolab) can work with it, and there are connectors for outlook. Cyrus does not use maildir, rather has its own maildir like storage which should play well with rsync. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 04, 2008 6:09 PM EST |
[HYPERLINK@chandlerproject.org] ?? Funny, "standalone caldav server" brings this thread up as find #3. |
| jdixon Nov 04, 2008 7:24 PM EST |
> Citadel does it exactly the way I don't want it: Understood. Groupware has never made my list of things to look into, so I can't offer any personal advice. I can say that for web based email, squirrelmail seems to be one of the most popular programs. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 04, 2008 8:49 PM EST |
Well, I found a stand-alone CalDAV server, and it's even in Debian Lenny :-) (though it has a severe packaging bug IMHO that I have reported). It's Apple's CalendarServer and reportedly works fine with Lightning. So, only a few gaps left to fill, mainly contacts. Does any of you have experience with LDAP for contact management? Any apps that make LDAP look user friendly? |
| herzeleid Nov 04, 2008 10:35 PM EST |
Let us know how that caldav server works - if it really does the job, there could be a lot of opportunity for installing FOSS mail server/collaboration stack for cash strapped businesses, and others who simply want to maximize their bang for the buck. |
| pat Nov 05, 2008 12:40 AM EST |
I like simple group ware. [HYPERLINK@www.simple-groupware.de] The merge features for calendaring are interesting. I've used citadel and while it works well, small and fast, it lacks a large number of features. Giiven how long it has been around I just don't understand why they are still missing. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 05, 2008 2:17 AM EST |
@herzeleid: Will do. The biggest drawback I found so far is that it needs a patched version of Twisted to run. This is not a problem with the upstream version as it downoads and uses it's own private copy of Twisted, but Debian (and derivatives) currently patch the system-wide Twisted. That makes it useless if you have anything else on your system that uses Twisted (I do). @pat: Simple Groupware looks nice but for me it has the same problem as Citadel: It's way overkill in features and doesn't use standard back-ends like CalDAV but implements its own stack. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 05, 2008 11:04 AM EST |
Good news. As far as Apple's CalendarServer goes it's a success. It's a real pain to install (packaging bugs, conflicts with python-twisted, changes to /etc/fstab) and an even bigger pain to administer (they have a CLI client that you can use, but it is buggy. I had to patch it) but after that it runs rather well and works nicely with Mozilla Lightning/Sunbird. Setting all the ACL rights on the server correctly with their CLI clients was a real pain, but I'm only talking about two users and one group here, for a grand total of five calendars. |
| herzeleid Nov 05, 2008 2:17 PM EST |
Thanks for the info, I'll have to start playing with this now. In my copious spare time, of course. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 05, 2008 5:59 PM EST |
I found another one. DAViCal. Written in PHP and it has an administrative web interface: [HYPERLINK@rscds.sourceforge.net] I haven't tested it (yet). |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 06, 2008 5:59 AM EST |
I found one bug with using CalendarServer: If you use Debian's IceOwl instead of the real Lightning then you need to disable Digest authentication in CalendarServer. There's a bug in IceOwl that makes it forget cached credentials so you need to authenticate every time. Mozilla has already fixed this in Lightning 0.9. |
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