How to Make Google Calendar work with Kontact

[pnunn]

With great fear and trepidation I performed this update (given the mess I made with the Xorg update). I have to say, so far I'v VERY happy. Kmail is actually working as it should (akonadi seems to be way better) and google connections are also working fine.

Thanks so much sumski.

Peter.

[The Liquidator]

Update:

I just received an update of akonadi-google and wow! it works!

I'll have a go with it now and evaluate it.

[The Liquidator]

@Steve Riley

Whilst I would love to be able to accomplish something like that I'm afraid I would fail on a couple of counts:

1. I don't have a server as my entire computer hardware consists of a 6 year old Centrino Laptop and a work-provided Galaxy Note
2. In my line of business "computer skills" are sadly defined as being proficient in Word/Excel/Outlook etc. I am sufficiently senior however to mean that the IT department tolerate and respect my wish to use stuff like Libreoffice/firefox instead of the MS equivalents. However, I don't think that qualifies me to be an expert, so I wouldn't know where to start with your solution even if I had the server.

Having looked I have been unable to find anywhere I could use where I could use my .co.uk e-mail address, use both my mail and calendar from my laptop, phone and work (by the web) - aside from Google. So it looks to me that I am stuck with it, hence my renewed interest in kmail, following the recent announcements about Thunderbird.

[SteveRiley]

That's what I did initially when I tried it the first time - Korganiser wiped every entry in the google calendar (12 years worth of stuff). I later found out it was a known bug. I was rescued by a backup but did lose a few days data. As you can probably understand I am a bit cautious on this now, but having exported the calendar so I now have a copy on the hard drive I'll have a play maybe with both options.

Google's deviations from IMAP and CalDAV standards mean that using third-party clients always entails some risk. I got so sick of having to futz with Google's protocol changes that I'm now running my own calendar server. Currently I'm using DavICAL, because I wanted to check it out. Previously I used OwnCloud, which also worked fine.

And here's the beauty of standards: using KOrganizer, I exported my entire calendar from OwnCloud into a vCalendar file. Then I connected KOrganizer to my DavICAL instance, imported the vCalendar, and every event appeared -- all time zones were correct, repeating events repeated exactly as before, basically it just all worked.

I have been very happy with my little home server. It's running:

* Postfix for SMTP
* Dovecot for IMAP and sieve rules
* DavICAL for calendar (CalDAV) and contacts (CardDAV)
* Roundcube for webmail
* TT-RSS for feeds
* Webmin for management
* PostgreSQL as the back-end database
* BIND for DNS

I will probably rebuild this thing once more, just to get a little more experience configuring a Ubuntu server. I should write up my config, I guess.

[sumski]

Almost, haven't updated "less atractive" modules.
You can find available packages here:
http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...u_12.04/amd64/

[The Liquidator]

Shouldn't have to worry about this. Google Calendar implements CalDAV (sort of), which runs on good ol' HTTP(S).

That's what I did initially when I tried it the first time - Korganiser wiped every entry in the google calendar (12 years worth of stuff). I later found out it was a known bug. I was rescued by a backup but did lose a few days data. As you can probably understand I am a bit cautious on this now, but having exported the calendar so I now have a copy on the hard drive I'll have a play maybe with both options.

@ sumski

If I follow your instructions, for which I thank you, what would actually be upgraded? Would I be right in assuming this be a full KDE upgrade?

[SteveRiley]

One other point - does akonadi need to access a specific port that I might have closed in the firewall?

Shouldn't have to worry about this. Google Calendar implements CalDAV (sort of), which runs on good ol' HTTP(S).

[sumski]

Devs haven't built kdepim-runtime against libkgapi for now, but i have
You can find* 4.9 RC2 here
https://build.opensuse.org/project/m...AKDE%3AKubuntu
For adding it to sources list you need to

wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/sumski:/KDE:/Kubuntu/xUbuntu_12.04/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key

and add

deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/sumski:/KDE:/Kubuntu/xUbuntu_12.04/ ./

to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/obs.list
and the usual

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

*Can't guarantee anything, but installed it on my sister's and girlfriend's Precise install, and there hasn't been any issues

[The Liquidator]

I'm running Kde 4.8.90 which I believe is the 4.9 beta

According to this

http://www.progdan.cz/2012/04/akonadi-google-0-3-1/

The google akonadi resources are part of 4.9. If I install libkgapi from the ppa referred to I get the parsing error. If I remove it I don't seem to have google calendar as an option. I am confused.

It may be that the parsing error is caused by a conflict caused by having both libkgapi and 4.9. If it is, I'm just wondering what of the other options I need to use to connect.

FYI my kontact version is 4.9 beta 2

Edit: Actually - scratch that - if I uninstall libkgapi there is no change.

Further info if it helps. I am trying to access a calendar held in my private .co.uk address registered as a google app. To see whether that made any difference I tried adding the calendar in my generic gmail name. I got quite excited when I saw my details on screen but I got the same error message when I tried to get akonadi to connect to it.

One other point - does akonadi need to access a specific port that I might have closed in the firewall?

[sumski]

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/scratch/dvratil/akonadi-google-resources.git
cd akonadi-google-resources
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make
sudo make install

[pnunn]

Sumski or SteveRiley, just after some help here. I've compiled and installed libkgapi but I'm not finding any google resources in my kdepim setup. What exactly do I need to do to make this work again with Kontact 4.8.4? (I should have kept a copy of the old code shouldn't I ).

Thanks, and sorry if its a dumb question.

Peter.

[The Liquidator]

Must admit I fell out badly with the KDE pim suite when korganiser wiped out my google calendar a year or so ago. 10 years worth of diary events deleted at a stroke. I was fortunate in that I had done a back-up a few days before and I had enabled the Lightning plugin caching function.

Have decided to give it another try:
kmail - fine
Contacts - seem fine after a clean-up of data following export from thunderbird
Google calendar - failed. On login - the error pane says parsing token page failed.
I'm aware of this bug
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301240

Reading there it says that the bug is solved in libkgapi 0.4.1, which is the one I have installed from the author's repository.

Can anyone suggest a fix please?

[sumski]

Former akonadi-google has splitted in libkgapi (library only) and akonadi-google-resources (merged in kdepim-runtime for KDE 4.9).
http://www.progdan.cz/2012/05/libkgoogle-libkgapi/
You need* first to build libkgapi
https://projects.kde.org/news/150
and then what is in now kdepim-runtime, but maintainer for now keeps a copy for older KDEPIM:
http://quickgit.kde.org/index.php?p=....git&a=summary


/*/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=49769
(Comment from progdan)

[SteveRiley]

Akonaidi-Google is being reworked. More info: http://www.progdan.cz/2012/05/libkgoogle-libkgapi/

[pnunn]

No I don't have any idea. I just tried the git clone myself and got the same response. I wonder if github is down for maintenance or something like that.

I'll try again later and see what happens.

Peter.