ICal Server setup help !!!

Question

Hello All,
I would like to share my experience with setting up the iCal server and all the hick ups I had to get it finally working. At least what worked for me. Check the basics before you start.
This is all done from after installing the server in Advanced setup or so to say normal installation as it was under Tiger. I'm trying to summarize what I have done. It took me a lot of hours do. So if I mis something feel free to reply with the missing things. Maybe together we can setup a working manual for all others that have problems with the setup and lack documentation from Apple.
1) Make sure your DNS is setup properly and working. Test it with:
type: “named-checkconf” in de root account of the terminal. Nothing should happen thats OK
type: “named-checkzone” in de root account of the terminal make sure you use the complete path and bare in mind that Apple changed the DNS setup again pointing to something like var/named/zones/db.example.come.zone.apple. The serial of the DNS should load and you should receive a OK. Make sure that your server IP is also mentioned in the system preferences/network DNS so you can use for example the server.example.com in server admin.
2) Either use SSL or don't when you want to use, use it everywhere otherwise it something will slip trough and want work. Without SSL it appears to work easier in the setup from local iCal client to server. But SSL is of course more secure. I want talk about Kerberos because I'm not able to get that to work yet.
3) Make sure you set it up from an "Open directory", "Local directory" should/could work to but I haven't test that yet and I seriously doubt it would work properly.
That being said I now can share my setup with you (switch your firewall of during setup it's easier to troubleshoot, switch it on again if everything works. If it stops working after the firewall is on again, well you know where to look for the problem :-)):
1) After setting up the Open Directory Master I switched on SSL and created a own certificate for my server. I didn't protected the certificate with a password as it gives a lot of extra problems with setting things it up. You can than select the certificate under Server Admin/Open Directory click on setting and click the tab LDAP. There you can select it.
2) Make sure your webserver is running and you have a working website where you can go to. Under Server Admin make sure that under the selection Sites that your FQDN is filled out. Being something like www.example.com and not example.com. The second one could cause iCal web part to not work accordingly at least that is my experience. After that choose security and make sure SSL is on and your certificate is selected. The rest of the website settings is pretty basic I didn't changed to much. I do know that I switched on some extra modules. Being bonjour_module, authzsvnmodule, davsvnmodule. This prevented further in the installation the 210 error when I went to the Calendar under my webbrowser. I wouldn't know which of the 3 is doing the trick I only know that after this it worked for me.
3) Pffffff OK go to the iCal Server settings under the Server Admin. The settings are straight forward but again make sure SSL is on and your certificate is selected. And look at your host name which should be someting like server.example.com. If you are not able to get DNS setup properly you could try your machines example.local name. But that again could give troubles when you want to use local iCal client outside the door on a laptop for example.
These where all the server admin setting. Now go to the Workgroup Manager and selected the group/groups you want to have Calendaring switched on and choose the way people are able to logon. This you can do by going to the group select the default website and services you want to give. Then select under Allow the way people can logon to this website or iCal services.
When that's done you should have everything up and running on the server site. So now go to a local iCal client and go to preferences/accounts/server setting. Click the + on the left bottom site and fill out a name and password leave the server option for now to auto. This way and when everything is setup properly you should get something like https://server.example.com:8443/principals/_uids_/14A0DD22-86CA-4F55-96D9-9CB461640D52/. The end number should refer to your name and password account so the number want be the same as in this example. Well if it works you are one of the lucky people and you are able to setup a shared Calendar from there. It would help a lot if you have more than one machine to test. Because it didn't worked on my MacBook Pro getting a famous error "iCal unexpected secure name resolution" But it did worked on my wifes iMac. So the server settings are OK. Now the good part when it's not working is that you can go to your webbrowser and type or copy the following: https://www.example.com:8443/principals/users/shortname (naturally use your own server name and user name). There you can see details of the principals settings. Including youre uids number. This number is unique for your name and password. Copy this number. Then go back to iCal switch of the auto find in iCal client under preferences/accounts/server settings. The first part of the link is https://server.example.com:8443/principals/uids/(Now paste you number here). Hit enter and see what happens. It the name server is not working for you than use for example iso server the name mail if you have it setup in the DNS is should work. It did worked for me and it gave me a nice shared calendar which you can name for yourself. Every group member should be able to see this agenda once hooked up to it via iCal client and prefences/accounts/server settings.
If you go to your website or www.example.com/groups you should see youre shared group. Sorry I only tried it with one group sofar. If you make changes to the calendar from the webbrowser it will show up after a refresh in your iCal client and visa versa. The only thing I still have problems with is the events for more days. They show up on the web as events but when I click them they produce a unwanted error. But when it's based on a single day than it work perfectly.
Hopefully you have a working iCal server to now. If you find something interesting or you think I left some important things out. Please reply and fill out the blanks.
I just hope that it will save some time for the new once setting this up.

Answer 1

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I am looking at setting up an iCal server myself for our business. However, our situation is a bit different. Could you also share what kind of workgroup you set it up for? And maybe help me answer a few questions below. Thanks in advance!
First a little background. We are a small management company. We have individual clients that we manage. We need to have access to their calendars to schedule events, etc. The thing is that we would be the only ones looking at everyone else's calendars at once so that we can coordinate our own schedules so that we can be where it is most important but still not lose track of other activities.
1. What kind of machine are you running the iCal Server on? Xserve? MacPro?
2. Is it possible to view multiple users' calendars within a single calendar view?
3. Does setting up this kind of calendar server sound like the setup for our situation where only we, the management, will be able to view all calendars?
4. How difficult will this set up be on our clients and their machines since we have little control over their personal machines? (The majority of our clients are all Mac users. There may be one PC user.)