OT WebDAV server

A friend and I are trying to find a way to share our Mozilla Thunderbird
calendars without doing something like using a Google Calendar.

She found an article on setting up a WebDAV server, but this is above
our pay grades at the moment.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ndows-7-8.html

My first question is simple, is such a server a 3rd piece of hardware
that would be necessary, or just a setup on each computer?


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 45.7.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On Tue, 9 May 2017 09:58:59 -0600
Ken Springer wrote:

A friend and I are trying to find a way to share our Mozilla
Thunderbird calendars without doing something like using a Google
Calendar.

She found an article on setting up a WebDAV server, but this is above
our pay grades at the moment.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ndows-7-8.html

My first question is simple, is such a server a 3rd piece of hardware
that would be necessary, or just a setup on each computer?



The answer is at the link you posted.

Read it.

Ken Springer wrote:
A friend and I are trying to find a way to share our Mozilla Thunderbird
calendars without doing something like using a Google Calendar.

She found an article on setting up a WebDAV server, but this is above
our pay grades at the moment.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ndows-7-8.html


My first question is simple, is such a server a 3rd piece of hardware
that would be necessary, or just a setup on each computer?



It can be.

If you run it on your current machine, then you can have
the Webdav server and your client, on the same computer.

Dyndns maps new IP to ken.springer.com
+---------------------------------------------------+ ken.springer.com:443
| |
Router (Port forward WAN 443 to Foreign Client (Her
| the IP of the connected machine) | Calendar)
Ethernet v ^
|
Ken WebDAV Client
PC server (Calendar)
| |
+-----------+ 127.0.0.1:443

If you run the IIS and Webdav stuff on your machine, you
can use "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" to reach it. Your
calendar access is instantaneous.

When you put port forwarding on the router, that's only
half the story. Every time you power up the router,
there's a chance the ISP uses dynamic IP addresses, which
are never twice the same (i.e. come from a pool of 2 million
addresses). If the router has Dyndns, the router can send
a packet to a Dynamic DNS service on the Internet, informing
that machine that ken.springer.com is at a new address and
that address is 11.22.33.44. The Dyndns machine uploads DNS changes
to actual DNS servers. Without about 15 minutes of a
new IP address being used, people on the general Internet
will be able to type ken.springer.com (the domain you purchased)
and get the address from regular DNS as 11.22.33.44. Then, the
foreign client sends its first packet to 11.22.33.44:443.

If you turn off the power to your computer, her calendar
no longer works. How can you fix that ?

*******

If you rent a web server for xx per month, you can host the
Webdav on there.

Rent-A-Server
|
| Webdav-on-443
|
+----------------+-----------------+
| |
You Her
(Client) (Client)

The power never goes off at the Rent-A-Server. The
operator has a performance guarantee of .99999, so the
server never goes down. You can turn off your PC and her
calendar still works.

If the two of you share a common employer, that employer is
an excellent place to do the hosting. For one, the business
setting uses a business Internet account, with permission
to operate servers. Home IP accounts, the TOS probably says
"no servers".

And in case you think it's technically difficult to detect
violations of the TOS, with 2 million customers, the DPI
(Deep Packet Inspection) box can enforce "no server" rules,
without human intervention.

For example, someone in one of the other groups, attempted
to test the "no email forwarding" rule in the TOS. The DPI
box closed the port, as soon as it recognized an attempt to
use SMTP protocol. The port would remain closed for 15 minutes
after the protocol stopped being used. Then the port would
open again. A log may be generated at the ISP, but nobody phones
your house to give you ****.

So yes, there's more than one solution. And no solution
is "ideal", considering this is just a calendar application.
It's a lot of work, to make that private calendar work.

There may be schemes which do calendar protocols peer-to-peer.
THat might work well if all the machines are on the same
LAN segment (no port forwarding). Our Unix boxes had some
sort of Calendar scheme like that. At the time, there were
no SmartPhones, so there wasn't a need to support operation
of the thing... everywhere. Where you expect this stuff to
work, makes a difference to what implementations are practical.
The "Rent-A-Server" idea covers a lot of ground.

Paul

On 5/9/17 1:28 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
A friend and I are trying to find a way to share our Mozilla Thunderbird
calendars without doing something like using a Google Calendar.

She found an article on setting up a WebDAV server, but this is above
our pay grades at the moment.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ndows-7-8.html




Hi, Paul,

My first question is simple, is such a server a 3rd piece of hardware
that would be necessary, or just a setup on each computer?



It can be.

If you run it on your current machine, then you can have
the Webdav server and your client, on the same computer.

This answers my question. But pretty much 99% of everything you wrote
after this is way, way over my head. ROFL It represents an area of
computing I've never had any interest in. :-)

So I've snipped most of it, and just have general, basic questions.

snip

If you turn off the power to your computer, her calendar
no longer works.

So... Then in very simplified terms, we are each operating and using a
server for our day to day work, as opposed to a server off in some dark
corner, and we each use a workstation?

How can you fix that ?

So the normal operation of a situation like this is to use a 3rd
computer that is on 24/7? More likely in a company type environment
rather than two home users, I would guess.

snipped what is over my head

So yes, there's more than one solution. And no solution
is "ideal", considering this is just a calendar application.
It's a lot of work, to make that private calendar work.

She is the one that found the link I posted, and as soon as I started
reading it, I got the feeling this is something I don't want. Plus the
article is only for Windows, and I'm using Mac for my email. (And no, I
don't want to switch! LOL) I haven't found a similar article for the
Mac yet, just some articles aimed more at pros like you, rather than a
user like me.

Especially since we're looking at this just so she doesn't have to deal
with Google. She saw all this latest stuff about "the bad guys" spying
on you using your webcam and mic without your knowledge, so she now puts
a piece of paper over her webcam unless we are on Skype.

Me? At 69, I don't care. If some idiot hacker out there ends up seeing
me in my birthday suit, he/she is welcome to pay for the surgery to
restore their eyesight! LOL

There may be schemes which do calendar protocols peer-to-peer.

I had thought about this a long time ago, long before she started using
Thunderbird. Prior to that, all her email had been done via webmail and
Internet Explorer. Prior to her using TB, I simply set up a Google
calendar we both had access to.

With what she wants to see, I'm not sure if Google is completely out of
the picture anyway. I've not investigated, since I'm not interested in
the work this WebDAV solution is going to entail. I'd rather spend my
time elsewhere.

The "Rent-A-Server" idea covers a lot of ground.

For me to be interested, we'd have to be sharing a lot more than
calendars. Quite possibly, a solution using Dropbox or similar would
work better for us.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 45.7.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:

For me to be interested, we'd have to be sharing a lot more than
calendars. Quite possibly, a solution using Dropbox or similar would
work better for us.

My buddies at work, were more interested in the Calendar
thing than I was. They did the work, and I was only too
happy to join in later. It did make detecting blocks
of time easier for some meeting purposes.

If you search on "peer-to-peer cross platform calendar",
you might dig up some more interesting ideas.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/02...-buys-sunrise/

Paul

On 5/10/17 6:18 AM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

For me to be interested, we'd have to be sharing a lot more than
calendars. Quite possibly, a solution using Dropbox or similar would
work better for us.

My buddies at work, were more interested in the Calendar
thing than I was. They did the work, and I was only too
happy to join in later. It did make detecting blocks
of time easier for some meeting purposes.

If you search on "peer-to-peer cross platform calendar",
you might dig up some more interesting ideas.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/02...-buys-sunrise/
I posted this question on the Mozilla Thunderbird group, and was told
about GeneralSync.

https://generalsync.com/en/

It's in beta, and told me TB was not installed, ever after updating both
TB and Lightning. I've just send an email to the developer to let him
know, and will wait and see what he says.

Rainlender was suggested in the Mozilla group as an option/possibility.
I'll look into that dependent on what the GeneralSync developer says.

--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 53.0.2 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 52.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On Tue, 9 May 2017 09:58:59 -0600, Ken Springer wrote:
A friend and I are trying to find a way to share our Mozilla Thunderbird
calendars without doing something like using a Google Calendar.

She found an article on setting up a WebDAV server, but this is above
our pay grades at the moment.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ndows-7-8.html

My first question is simple, is such a server a 3rd piece of hardware
that would be necessary, or just a setup on each computer?


It's a horrible, horrible piece of Microsoft software.

Back when I was teaching at a local community college, they replaced
good old reliable FTP with WebDAV. All of a sudden, I could no longer
update my instructional pages. In repeated attempts over a year
(literally), the school's IT people were unable to fix this. They're
not idiots, and they do that for a living.

My advice to you: run far, run fast.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...