Your favorite way to synchronize addressbook/calendar?

[blscreen]

Hi,

I would like to synchronize my address book and calandar across different computers (not to mobile devices, that would be the next step ).

Prerequisites:
I have two linux systems, one is permanently running and accessible over the internet and one is a laptop.

This is my wishlist:

* no third party involved, I do not want to send my data to google or any other company.
* offline access to data. Though an online solution could be acceptable, I would prefer a solution where I have access to my data on the laptop even if it is not connected to the internet.
* desktop independent. I use gnome and kde (don't aks why ). I'm happy if kmail, kaddressbook, korganizer and evolution is supported.

I have already tried an ldap server running on my stationary pc. This is ok as an online solution for addresses, but there are some drawbacks: I have not found a way to store birthday information with kaddressbook, and this does not work for calendar data.

I'm looking forward to your solutions for synchronizing contacts and calendars!

Regards
Raimar

[psycho]

plain ol' file sync can do this. rsync is fine, or you could use something like unison if you want a gui. just identify the relevant files and/or directories and sync as required. i use thunderbird on my desktop and laptop, and simply sync everything under Mail (i.e. sync the whole ~/.thunderbird/[randomgibberish]/Mail directory on both machines).

unison is quite nice because it will show you a list of stuff that's changed, and you can either sync the lot, or tell it what to do separately for each changed file. "what to do" includes skipping the file, or propagating it in a particular direction (e.g. you can sync the newer version with the older version if you know you've stuffed up the version you took on your laptop, or whatever).

oh, hang on a minute: this might not work for you if you're making changes simultaneously on BOTH machines. sorry...i'm either on the desktop or the laptop, so the issue of new contacts being added to both simultaneously doesn't come up. if you need that kind of flexibility, i guess you need one file per record (vcards) or some other solution.

[MotivatedTea]

I solved this problem (at least for KDE) by setting up my own IMAP server and storing my calendar and address book in it in Kolab 2 format. You can use any IMAP server to store Kolab data. Kolab is just a way of storing addresses and calendar entries on an IMAP server. But I didn't want to be stuck without my calendar and address book whenever some third-party server goes down.

To set this up in KMail, first configure your IMAP server as a "disconnected IMAP server". (A "normal" IMAP server won't work. A "disconnected" one caches your messages locally somewhere under your ~/.kde folder so that everything still accessible when you're offline.) Then go to Settings > Configure KMail > Misc > Groupware. Check "Enable IMAP resource functionality", set the format to Kolab2, and point it at your KMail account. Finally, in both the Contacts and Calendar sections of Kontact, add a new address book (or calendar resource) of type "imap address book" (or "imap resource").

I don't use GNOME, so I can't help you with Evolution. After a few minutes of googling, it looks like Evolution doesn't have built-in Kolab2 support, but someone's working on a ruby script to do that: http://www.iti.uni-stuttgart.de/~bartscgr/ambergris/.

If you're using Thunderbird, there is a plugin called [url]SyncKolab[/url] that's supposed to work for both addresses and for the calendar, if you're using the Lightning extension. I used to use it under Windows. However, I found the calendar sync to be pretty buggy. After the second time it wiped out most of my appointments, I stopped using it. I don't know whether or not things have improved since then. The address book part of SyncKolab seems ok, though.