Kolab extension for thunderbird

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 8th, 2005, 7:20 pm

Hi I wrote an extension for thunderbird that allows sync of contacts with an imap folder. You can get it from http://www.gargan.org/extensions/synckolab.html . It works pretty good (alotough currently quite slow...) under windows, but when trying it under linux I get weird exceptions when trying to get all messages in a folder using gContactFolder.getMessages(null); (where gContactFolder is from type nsIMsgFolder). Anyone know why this happens?

whodaresgin · Post by **whodaresgin** » March 9th, 2005, 2:37 am

I've installed the synckolab extension on clients runnnig the following operation systems:

Windows XP
Solaris 10
Mac OS X

I am getting errors trying to sync, getting "unable to get offline stream, make sure the folder is downloaded!" this has happened on all 3 OS's. Stopping/starting Thunderbird and re-trying usually works.

I have found a bug sync'ing with Solaris or Mac OS X which is easy to reproduce.

Start with an address book containing 1 entry and sync on a Windows client
Quit Thunderbird and the vcard on the imap server looks like this.

BEGIN:VCARD
N:Made;Up;
FN:Made Up
EMAIL:made.up@nowhere.net
FN:Made Up
UID:pas-id-FB6ACC3F4D3D4A4E
VERSION:3.0
END:VCARD

Start Thunderbird on a Mac OS X or Solaris client and sync.
Quit Thunderbird and the vcard on the imap server looks like this.

BEGIN:VCARD
N:Made;Up;
FN:Made U
EMAIL:made.up@nowhere.ne
FN:Made U
UID:pas-id-FB6ACC3F4D3D4A4
VERSION:3.0
END:VCARD

The data has been corrupted, the last charactor from the FN, EMAIL, and UID fields has been lost. If I then run Thunderbird on the Windows client and sync a new, duplicate address book entry is created for each of the corrupt vcards.

Let me know if you need any further info about this issue or would like to me to do some testing.

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 9th, 2005, 3:58 am

thanks for this bug. I uploaded v0.2.3 which resolves this (hopefully:P). I am about to change the way messages are read so the "unable to get offline stream"-bug wont happen again. Right now, make sure the folder is set as for offline. let me now if you find anything else. I will also see if I can finish the write as calendar within this week

whodaresgin · Post by **whodaresgin** » March 9th, 2005, 5:37 am

Top Job! Confirmed as fixed on both Solaris 10 and Mac OS X.

I'll let you know if I find anything else.

How about an RFE?
I would prefer if the popup displaying status during syncing titled "Syncronizing with kolab folders" closed automatically after a successful sync.

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 9th, 2005, 7:24 am

I will do the window closing on finish in the next version... including the new message parsing, maybe i even find time for the calendar

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 15th, 2005, 3:09 pm

ok finished the new version (0.2.5). It fixes most issues. but opens up a new one. I use streammessage to get the content of mails, but streammessage does not give me any content if the username has a % or a @ in them (like I have a vpopmail account where the username is user@domain.tld)... I guess I will file a bug for tb.

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 22nd, 2005, 7:03 am

Ok, I think all bugs are fixed now. It would be good to test a little more before I start with the calendar. Current version: 0.2.8

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 28th, 2005, 11:18 am

I just updated SyncKolab to 0.3.1 it can now sync address book and the calendar+todo...

chinch · Post by **chinch** » March 30th, 2005, 8:25 pm

this is a great extension. unfortunately installing it on one xp-home pc caused TB 1.02 to not start. i had to go into safe mode, uninstall the extension and continue not using

any ideas?

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 31st, 2005, 1:55 am

nope, this is the first time (since about v0.1) that I heard something like that. Maybe a cleanup in the profile dir could help (Mine was once so messed I had to reinstall tbird), oh and did you have the calendar extension installed (I did not try the etension without it)

chinch · Post by **chinch** » March 31st, 2005, 2:25 pm

i did not have the calendar installed. recently uninstalled v1.00 and reinstalled tb 1.02. recreating the profile and 5-6 accounts/settings would be a nightmare.

TB never appeared, but the exe shows up in Windows Task Manager Process tab

will try on another pc soon (thank god for mozilla "safe mode")

gargan · Post by **gargan** » March 31st, 2005, 4:03 pm

you could also just delete the synckolab extension folder in your profile/extensions dir (something like {571...}). Still a weird bug... Hope I find out how it happened to put a precaution message on the homepage

r.mariotti · Post by **r.mariotti** » June 3rd, 2005, 10:28 am

I too am getting synckolab v 0.4.17 work at all. When I try to execute it I receive the error message "Mailaccount Not Found! Check Configuration".

The defined folders on a remote IMAP server are there and unique. I send and receive my IMAP email just fine. Any pointers on how to correct this?

Thanks,

gargan · Post by **gargan** » June 3rd, 2005, 3:38 pm

best thing is check the mailing list on http://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/synckolab/ .. i remember the problem was solved by someone... dont remember jsut search for mailaccount not found

ericb · Post by **ericb** » June 11th, 2005, 2:49 am

WARNING: I just want to warn the potential users that syncKolab corrupted my datas the last time I tried it. The main problem was with the calendar entries and my calendar becomes a mess after I tried to copy my events to an IMAP server.

Even if you only want to copy your contact and calendar entries to an IMAP server, the extension do a read and re-write operation which (is) was buggy and corrupted my datas. The two problems, I found was :
- The time of the events as been modified and shifted by 0, 1 or 2 hours.
- The datas entries including international characters (UTF-8 ?) has been supersided with a blank entry.

I cannot reallly understand why it is necessary to perform this read/modify/write operation.