[SyncEvolution] SyncEvolution 1.5.1 released
by Patrick Ohly
About SyncEvolution
===================
SyncEvolution synchronizes personal information management (PIM) data
via various protocols (SyncML, CalDAV/CardDAV, ActiveSync). It syncs
contacts, appointments, tasks and memos. It syncs to web services or to
SyncML-capable phones via Bluetooth.
Binaries are available for Linux desktops (using GNOME Evolution, or
KDE's Akonadi), for Maemo (Nokia N900, N9) and Sailfish OS (Jolla
phone).
About 1.5.1
===========
Maintenance release. Binaries now also get compiled for Debian 8.0
"Jessie".
Details:
* avoid time zone issue with Funambol server
The Funambol iCalendar 2.0 parser fails to handle time zones
with quotation marks around the TZID value, which is something
that SyncEvolution started to add in 1.4.99.3. While it is valid
to quote like that, it is not necessary, so avoid quoting in
this case to restore interoperability.
* syncevo-http-server: stop using deprecated twisted.web.error (FDO #90419)
This has become a real problem for example on Fedora 22 where the
old name is no longer available.
* syncevo-http-server: use TLS instead of SSLv3
This fixes a potential security risk and connection problems with clients
that don't support SSLv3 anymore.
* syncing: avoid segfault for invalid text inside items (FDO #90118)
As reported by Canonical, syncing fails if data items contain
text which is not correct UTF-8 in one of the fields that
SyncEvolution logs in the command line output (like SUMMARY of
a calendar event).
That is because the byte string coming from the item is passed
unchecked to the D-Bus implementation for transmission via D-Bus. But
D-Bus strings must be correct UTF-8, so depending on the D-Bus library
in use, one gets a segfault (GIO D-Bus, due to an unchecked NULL
pointer access) or an "out of memory" error (libdbus, which checks for
NULL).
SyncEvolution now replaces invalid bytes with a question mark in its
output while preserving the rest of the text.
* file backend: log item manipulation
Extracting a meaningful description of each item from the Synthesis
engine when updating and adding items is easy to do for items of
certain known types (contacts and calendar items).
* command line: preserve log prefix of target side of local sync
In some cases, the prefix which was supposed to be embedded
in the log messages from the target side of a local sync got
lost on the way to the command line tool.
Primarily this affected the added/updated/deleted messages, as in:
[INFO remote@client] @client/addressbook: started
[INFO remote@client] updating "Joan Doe"
[INFO remote@client] @client/addressbook: received 1/1
* compile fix: use ${PKG_CONFIG} instead of pkg-config.
This fixes the build on Exherbo that only has prefixed versions of
pkg-config.
* WebDAV: handle 403 during Google OAuth authentication
When sending an access token with insufficient scope (for example,
because the Ubuntu Online Accounts service definition was incomplete,
as documented in FDO #86824), Google responds with a 403 "service
denied" error.
This is now dealt with by retrying, just as for a transient 401 error.
* CalDAV: more efficient "is empty" check (FDO #86335)
Since 1.4.99.4, syncing WebDAV collections always checks first
whether there are items in the collections. This was partly done for
slow sync prevention (which is not necessary for empty collections),
partly for the "is the datastore usable" check.
However, this did not take into account that for CalDAV collections,
the entire content gets downloaded for this check. That is because
filtering by item type (VEVENT vs. VJOURNAL) is not implemented
correctly by all servers. So now all CalDAV syncs, whether incremental
or slow, always transfered all items, which is not the
intention (incremental syncs should be fast and efficient).
This release adds a more efficient isEmpty() check: for simple CardDAV
collections, only luid and etag get transferred, as in
listAllItems(). This is the behavior from 1.5.
For CalDAV, a report with a filter for the content type is used and
the transfer gets aborted after the first item, without actually
double-checking the content of the item. This is different from
listAllItems(), which really transfers the content. This extra content
check would only be needed for some old servers (Radical 0.7) and is
not essential, because reporting "not empty" even when empty is safe.
* WebDAV: send Basic Auth via http in some cases (FDO #57248)
It turned out that finding databases on an Apple Calendar server accessed via
http depends on sending Basic Auth even when the server does not ask for it:
without authentication, there is no information about the current principal,
which is necessary for finding the user's databases.
To make this work again, sending the authentication header is now forced for
plain http if (and only if) the request which should have returned the
principal URL fails to include it. This implies sending the same request
twice, but as this scenario should be rare in practise (was only done for
testing), this is acceptable.
* Ubuntu Online Accounts: support plain text credentials
The backend for UOA was rewritten by Alberto Mardegan and now also
can use plain username/password credentials stored in UOA.
* various compiler error and warning fixes
Source, Installation, Further information
=========================================
http://syncevolution.org/blogs/pohly/2015/syncevolution-151-released
Source code bundles for users are available in
https://download.01.org/syncevolution/syncevolution/sources
and the original source is in the git repositories
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/SyncEvolution/
i386, lpia and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are
available via the "stable" syncevolution.org repository. Add the
following entry to your /etc/apt/source.list:
deb https://download.01.org/syncevolution/apt stable main
The GPG key for the repository needs to be imported as root with:
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B2EC3981
Then install "syncevolution-evolution", "syncevolution-kde" and/or
"syncevolution-activesync".
These binaries include the "sync-ui" GTK GUI and were compiled for
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid), except for ActiveSync binaries which were
compiled for Debian Wheezy, Ubuntu Saucy, Ubuntu Trusty an Debian
Jessie. The packages mentioned above are meta-packages which pull in
suitable packages matching the distro during installation.
Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported
with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source
still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).
The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in
https://download.01.org/syncevolution/syncevolution/. In contrast
to 0.8.x archives, the 1.x .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the
content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found
otherwise.
After installation, follow the
http://syncevolution.org/documentation/getting-started steps.
--
Patrick Ohly, on behalf of everyone who has helped
to make SyncEvolution possible:
http://syncevolution.org/about/contributors
6 months, 3 weeks
[SyncEvolution] Some remarks about online SyncML services
by Daniel CLEMENT
I was more or less forced to try the various SyncML services supported
by Syncevolution lately. I thought perhaps I could share some remarks I
have made about them.
1) OVI (for reference - dead and buried thanks to Microsoft)
------
2) Mobical
----------
... has become Everdroid, which in turn has become Keep
(https://www.keepcontacts.com/web/ ). But it's now nothing more than an
addressbook backup service. It no longer handles calendar, tasks nor
memos (so they could well be removed from the Mobical template).
3) Funambol
-----------
... (AKA OneMediaHub) was my favorite until they played a bad trick on
some of their users two months ago. 1st, they began rejecting normal
(non-SSL) connections--which makes some sense after all. But 2nd (and
there I'm guessing), without telling anyone, they switched from SHA1
signing scheme to SHA2. While Syncevolution handles this easily, that
was not the case of my aging Nokia E72 which has never heard of SHA2. So
along with several old phone users I was cut off from Funambol on the
smartphone side.
4) Memotoo
----------
... is not free, but the small fee is much less than a new phone. They
have been smart enough to devise a fallback address
(https://sha1.memotoo.com/syncml ) so that legacy (not SHA2-compliant)
devices can still take advantage of SSL connections. (But the normal
http address is still working.) I also appreciate that the one-way sync
can be triggered directly from their server (of course I can do that
from Syncevolution, but not from my phone). It's my best choice so far.
Best regards,
--
Daniel CLEMENT
4 years, 5 months
[SyncEvolution] Valid VEVENT from activesyncd being converted to invalid VEVENT somewhere in syncevolution?
by Graham Cobb
I have been trying to track down a problem that occurs when syncing my
Exchange calendar with local files. I am ending up with a few events
with missing DTSTART (which is invalid, of course).
It looks as though activesyncd is providing a valid VEVENT to
syncevolution: [I have removed ATTENDEE and PARTICIPANT lines and
modified my email address]
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Meego//ActiveSyncD 1.0//EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:(UTC) Dublin\, Edinburgh\, Lisbon\,
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:19701025T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0000
TZNAME:(UTC) Dublin\, Edinburgh\, Lisbon\,
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:19700329T010000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:(UTC) Dublin\, Edinburgh\, Lisbon\,
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20140926T083807Z
DTSTART;TZID="(UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon,":20141007T140000
UID:
040000008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000B029262875D2CF01000000000000000010
000000DD0ECC59F4B59A4AA0DDF2797B886E40
LOCATION:Online Meeting
DTEND;TZID="(UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon,":20141007T170000
X-LIC-ERROR;X-LIC-ERRORTYPE=VALUE-PARSE-ERROR:No value for DESCRIPTION
property. Removing entire property:
CLASS:PUBLIC
TRANSP:OPAQUE
X-MEEGO-ACTIVESYNCD-MeetingStatus:1
X-MEEGO-ACTIVESYNCD-NativeBodyType:3
ORGANIZER;CN=Graham Cobb:graham.cobb@example.com
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
TRIGGER;VALUE=DURATION:-PT15M
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
I believe that is a valid VEVENT, although note that it has neither a
SUMMARY: nor DESCRIPTION: line. [The UID has wrapped in the email but is
really formatted correctly]
When the event is saved as a file it has become:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Synthesis AG//NONSGML SyncML Engine V3.4.0.47//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
LAST-MODIFIED:20150618T220636Z
DTSTAMP:20150618T220636Z
UID:040000008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000B029262875D2CF01000000000000000
010000000DD0ECC59F4B59A4AA0DDF2797B886E40
CLASS:PUBLIC
TRANSP:OPAQUE
SUMMARY:unnamed
LOCATION:Online Meeting
ORGANIZER;CN="Graham Cobb":mailto:graham.cobb@example.com
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER;VALUE=DURATION:-PT15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
Note that there is no DTSTART! (And the DTSTAMP has been set to the
current time, and a fake SUMMARY has been created). The missing DTSTART
makes the VEVENT invalid.
Looking through the logs, I found this section during the parsing of the
event:
[...lots of timezone parsing...]
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="exotic">parseMimeDir: VTIMEZONE with ID='(UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh,
Lisbon,' parsed to internal time zone 'GMT'</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="exotic">parseMimeDir: property DTSTART parsing delayed,
rank=1</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="exotic">parseMimeDir: property DTEND parsing delayed,
rank=1</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="incoming">parseMimeDir: property not parsed (unknown or not
storable): X-LIC-ERROR;X-LIC-ERRORTYPE=VA</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="incoming">parseMimeDir: property not parsed (unknown or not
storable): X-MEEGO-ACTIVESYNCD-MeetingSta</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="incoming">parseMimeDir: property not parsed (unknown or not
storable): X-MEEGO-ACTIVESYNCD-NativeBody</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="error">parseMimeDir: missing 1 of 1 mandatory properies</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="error">Failed parsing item</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="script">- PARSETEXTWITHPROFILE() function result = <span
class="value">0</span> (integer)</span></li>
<li><i>[2015-06-18 23:06:36.192]</i> <span
class="exotic">- Evaluated unstored expression</span></li>
The two lines with class="error" don't look good!
I think this is a syncevolution bug, not an activesyncd bug. Do you
agree, or am I missing something?
Graham
4 years, 5 months
[SyncEvolution] Error: cannot store password in GNOME keyring, not enough attributes
by Graham Cobb
I am trying to move a configuration which works on my desktop system
(running KDE) to a headless system.
I know about running DBUS and gnome-keyring -- I am using Patrick's
dbus-session.sh to do the heavy lifting. In fact, I can successfully
sync between my Exchange account and a local filestore.
So, I moved on to what I thought would be the easy part: syncing the
local filestore with an Owncloud server (i.e. webdav).
However, attempting to configure that is giving me an error message:
syncevolution --configure --template none username=aaa password=bbb
printChanges=1 loglevel=4 target-config@Owncloud
[ERROR] sync password for target-config@owncloud: cannot store password
in GNOME keyring, not enough attributes (user=grc). Try setting syncURL
or remoteDeviceID if this is a sync password.
The exact same configure command works fine on my desktop system (where
I am using KDE keyring).
Here is a slightly simplified list of the commands I am using...
[The @FilesMaster context is already set up to provide access to the
local filestore -- it has been used for the Exchange sync]
syncevolution --configure --template none username= password=
printChanges=1 loglevel=4 Owncloud@FilesMaster
syncevolution --configure syncUrl=local://@Owncloud peerIsClient=1
loglevel=4 Owncloud@FilesMaster
syncevolution --configure sync=two-way uri=contacts loglevel=4
Owncloud@FilesMaster contacts
syncevolution --configure --template none username=aaa password=bbb
printChanges=1 loglevel=4 target-config@Owncloud
^^^^This is the command generating the error. If that had worked I
would have gone on to do:
syncevolution --configure sync=two-way uri=contacts loglevel=4
target-config@Owncloud contacts
syncevolution --configure --template none backend=carddav
database=https://example.com/owncloud/remote.php/carddav/addressbooks/aaa...
@Owncloud contacts
These all work on my KDE system. Any idea what I need to do to get
GNOME keyring to store my password?
By the way, leaving the password=bbb off the --configure command and
adding it to the --sync command works. But I am trying to store the
password in the keyring so it doesn't have to be included in the cron
command line itself.
Graham
4 years, 5 months