Topic: Horde - Funambol and exchange replacement

[sal1504]

David

You can add me to your list of impatient people wanting a How To. This is something I have been looking for, for a long time.

Sal

[mmccarn]

http://wiki.contribs.org/Horde_and_Funambol_Synchronization

I've been using the settings referenced above for a while.

Outlook sync works great with one caveat - "snooze" doesn't seem to sync from one Outlook to another, so if I get an alert on one system and "snooze" it for a week, I still get the alert on the other system - but this may be an oddity of my configuration (local .PST mailstore on one system, but Kerio Mailserver mailstore on the other).

Blackberry sync didn't work very well when I last tried it (about a month ago).

[pwalter]

Outlook sync works great ....

I have been testing synchronization between Horde on SME 7.4 and Outlook 2007 SP2 / Funambol Outlook connector 8.0.5, and I get somewhat different results. If you have more than about 500 Outlook contacts, Funambol gives a "server timeout" when trying to sync. If I try to sync the calendar, OutlookPlugin.exe gives a bugcheck. Tasks & Notes seem to sync without problems.

I have similar problems trying to sync Horde and Thunderbird/Sunbird using the Thunderbird Funanbol connector 0.91, and had similar issues (except they were generally worse). I posted to the funambol community site at https://core.forge.funambol.org , but so far my postings have not been responded to. I am going to cross-post to the Horde site in the hopes someone over there knows whether the problem lies in horde, or in funambol.

[Stefano]

I'm playng heavily with zarafa and its sync for windows mobile/iphone and outlook integration.. it works flawlessy, but, above all, it works out of the box

if everything will work as expected, I will replace 2 w2008 server and 1 exchange 2007 for a customer of mine..

[kevinb]

FYI

I also had issues when I tested Funambol with about 40 users and 1500 contacts:

• Server Timeout
• Un-predictable duplication of all contacts
• The Outlook and Thunderbird plugin did not allow syncing more than one account

I had these issues with the Horde server, locally installed Funambol server and Funambol's website server.

We settled on SOGo with Thunderbird and sync contacts and calendars only for $0 software cost.

I have not tested Zarafa since I did not want to change the default IMAP service and we did not want to buy Outlook clients and connectors.

Kevin

[pwalter]

We settled on SOGo with Thunderbird and sync contacts and calendars only for $0 software cost.

What's SOGo ?

[Stefano]

We settled on SOGo with Thunderbird and sync contacts and calendars only for $0 software cost.

so, are you using Sogo on SME 8.b4? can you share an howto?

Thank you

[Stefano]

What's SOGo ?

Sogo

[pwalter]

I am going to cross-post to the Horde site in the hopes someone over there knows whether the problem lies in horde, or in funambol.

Well, I already got some answers from sync@lists.horde.org. In summary:
http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/8474 - All day events cause crash with Funambol outlook connector. This problem is fixed in horde 3.3.5.
http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/8386 - Mapping is broken (duplicate records / records undeleted). This problem was fixed in horde 3.3.6 (as yet unreleased)

So, it appears that the horde<-->funambol connection is not yet ready for prime time. I will wait until SME updates to horde 3.3.6 before testing again.

[kevinb]

so, are you using Sogo on SME 8.b4? can you share an howto?

At the time I installed this SOGo required a LDAP server to authenticate to. The LDAP beta contrib did work. SOGo does some complicated redirection of http requests in order to distribute load and I never got this figured out on SME.

I ended up running a second Centos5 server with SOGo, LDAP and Postgresql. IMAP stays on SME and SOGo points to it.

I have been holding out for the LDAP contrib to get incorporated into SME before I write a How To. Once I figure out how to handle the redirection on SME, LDAP auth is incorporated into SME then SOGo will be ready to be a contrib.

I did post a how to on the forums awhile back on this.

Kevin

[Stefano]

At the time I installed this SOGo required a LDAP server to authenticate to. The LDAP beta contrib did work. SOGo does some complicated redirection of http requests in order to distribute load and I never got this figured out on SME.

I ended up running a second Centos5 server with SOGo, LDAP and Postgresql. IMAP stays on SME and SOGo points to it.

I have been holding out for the LDAP contrib to get incorporated into SME before I write a How To. Once I figure out how to handle the redirection on SME, LDAP auth is incorporated into SME then SOGo will be ready to be a contrib.

I did post a how to on the forums awhile back on this.

Kevin

ok, you are right, now I remember..

about http requests redirection, how does it works? I mean: if there are conf files to study, we could create the required fragments

[kevinb]

I'll get the SOGo.conf file posted here this weekend.

SOGo can use a mysql database (posgresql is default).

The latest version supports authentication via SQL as well as LDAP.

Kevin

[kevinb]

Here is the sogo.conf file from /etc/httpd/conf.d/. Do you need any other conf files as well (proxy_ajp.conf ssl.conf  welcome.conf)?

Alias /sogo.woa/WebServerResources/ \
      /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/SOGo/WebServerResources/
Alias /SOGo.woa/WebServerResources/ \
      /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/SOGo/WebServerResources/
Alias /SOGO.woa/WebServerResources/ \
      /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/SOGo/WebServerResources/
<LocationMatch "^/SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/.*UI/Resources/.*jpg">
  SetHandler default-handler
</LocationMatch>
<LocationMatch "^/SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/.*UI/Resources/.*png">
  SetHandler default-handler
</LocationMatch>
<LocationMatch "^/SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/.*UI/Resources/.*gif">
  SetHandler default-handler
</LocationMatch>
<LocationMatch "^/SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/.*UI/Resources/.*css">
  SetHandler default-handler
</LocationMatch>
<LocationMatch "^/SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/.*UI/Resources/.*js">
  SetHandler default-handler
</LocationMatch>
AliasMatch /SOGo/so/ControlPanel/Products/(.*)/Resources/(.*) \
           /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/SOGo/$1.SOGo/Resources/$2
<Proxy balancer://sogocluster>
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:20000 retry=1 max=1 timeout=120
# If you enable those, don't forget the enable the spawning of multiple SOGo
# processes. With Redhat-based distributions, this is done by setting the
# "PREFORK" variable in /etc/sysconfig/sogo to the amount of processes as
# value.
#   BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:20001 retry=1 max=1 timeout=120
#   BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:20002 retry=1 max=1 timeout=120
  ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests maxattempts=1
</Proxy>
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass /SOGo balancer://sogocluster/SOGo

[arnoldob]

Well, I already got some answers from sync@lists.horde.org. In summary:
http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/8474 - All day events cause crash with Funambol outlook connector. This problem is fixed in horde 3.3.5.
http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/8386 - Mapping is broken (duplicate records / records undeleted). This problem was fixed in horde 3.3.6 (as yet unreleased)

So, it appears that the horde<-->funambol connection is not yet ready for prime time. I will wait until SME updates to horde 3.3.6 before testing again.

I followed the HowTo here: http://wiki.contribs.org/Horde_and_Funambol_Synchronization. Horde 3.3.6 is out in the SME test repo, I updated without ill effects, also installed kronolith, nag and mnemo. I can get Outlook sync working, at least it runs without an error. Should I see the contacts in my horde addressbook? 

Funambol is also available in the iTunes store for free. But it doesn't work well on my iPhone. It gets a "server not found please check settings" message using the same address that works in the Outlook Funambol. I'm using a SME 7.4 that's pretty much otherwise stock. Any ideas?

[daniel]

I was able to get calendar and tasks to sync with outlook and Horde, but contacts originating from outlook would never get moved to Horde databases.  Horde contacts would move to outlook.  Everything I could find in the logs suggested funambol worked correctly.  I gave up on trying to make it work and moved on to testing other exchange like applications.  There was an issue with a horde calendar item being set to reoccur at a certain date and time, outlook would show the reoccurance as all day, or vice versa.  I don't remember the exact issue on the calendar item.