Publish iCal Local Account Calendar on OS X Server

Question

I'd like to publish my iCal calendar (iCal>Calendar>Publish...>Publish on: A private server) on my OS X Server 10.6.7 ().
Whenever I attempt to do this using my local account on tthe server, I get the error:
http://username@domain_name/Home.ics is not a location that supports this request.
I've tried all the obvious stuff: turning off the firewall, sanity checking the iCal service authentication settings, everything obvious. I believe that this is an authentication issue for local accounts on OS X Server. Because the server is set up as a standalone (i.e., no network accounts, all local accounts), Open Directory is turned off, and there's no Kerberos authentication that I'm aware of.
Would someone please tell me how how to publish iCal calendars of local accounts on OS X Server?

Answer 1

According to iCal Server Administration, OS X Server requires an Open Directory account, so you cannot publish your local account's iCal calendar.
You can, however, use iCal itself and a modification of the OS X Hint "Publish iCal calendars with local WebDAV server" to publish local account calendars.
0. Server Admin>Web>Sites Turn on the Web with an enabled host name. Make sure that WebDAV is enabled under Server Admin>Web>Sites>Options. Enable SSL with your server's certificate under Server Admin>Web>Sites>Security to ensure that your personal calendar information is SSL encrypted over the web.
1. Append this directive to the end of the file /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
Include /private/etc/apache2/other/*.conf
and make sure that there's no conf file in ./other that you may not wish to load, such as httpd-userdir.conf. Move these to *.conf.original or some such if necessary.
2. Create the file /private/etc/apache2/other/httpd-webdav.conf with the contents:
# WebDAV configureation for Publishing local account iCal calendars
#  Based in part on Mac OS X Hint "iPublish iCal calendars with local WebDAV server Apps"
# http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020912065811863
# copied from /etc/apache2/sites/0000_any_443_myserver.conf
# which is automatically generated by Server Admin>Web
# No need to replicate these directives here, so comment out
#<IfModule mod_dav.c>
#       DAVLockDB "/var/run/davlocks/.davlock100"
#       DAVMinTimeout 600
#</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
  <Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav">
    DAV On
    AuthType Digest
    AuthName 'WebDAV'
    AuthDigestFile /private/etc/apache2/httpd/.htdigest
    AuthGroupFile /dev/null
#    <LimitExcept GET HEAD OPTIONS>
      require valid-user
#    </LimitExcept>
  </Directory>
</IfModule>
3. Create the apache htdigest authentication file:
$ mkdir /private/etc/apache2/httpd
$ chmod 0755 /private/etc/apache2/httpd
$ touch /private/etc/apache2/httpd/.htdigest
$ chmod 0644 /private/etc/apache2/httpd/.htdigest
$ htdigest /private/etc/apache2/httpd/.htdigest WebDAV username
Adding password for username in realm WebDAV.
New password: md5 hashed password
Re-type new password: md5 hashed password
4. Create the WebDAV directory:
$ mkdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav
$ chown www:www /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav
$ chmod 0755 /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav
$ mkdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav/iCal
$ chown www:www /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav/iCal
$ chmod 0755 /Library/WebServer/Documents/webdav/iCal
and sanity check that the OS X Server davlocks directory /var/run/davlocks exists [it should!] and has www:www ownership with permissions 755 [it should!].
5. Sanity check your apache config files:
$ apachectl -t
should yield "Syntax OK". Then Server Admin>Web>Stop and Start to restart your web server with the new configuration.
5. Under your local account on OS X Server, iCal>Calendar>Publish... Publish on a private server with the URL:
https://osxserver/webdav/iCal
using OS X Server's local account username/password. Success will be reported with a URL of your calendar on the server.
6. Under another client account from which you wish to subscript to your OS X Server local account's Calender, iCal>Calender>Subscribe... Enter the URL on OS X Server. You will be prompted for the htdigest name/password pair you created above -- enter this, not the username/password of your local account on OS X Server. Even though you should be protecting this channel with SSL and md5, don't reuse your username/password to access the WebDAV directory you created. You will now be subscribed to your local account's iCal Calendar residing on OS X Server.