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l008com · Oct 5, 2010, 12:28 AM

Has anyone successfully set up one of these? I've been having a NIGHTMARE of a time trying to set one up on a new Mac mini server. Non stop errors. I've tried calling Apple but it's been extremely unhelpful. I even tried formatting my server and reinstalling from scratch. I set everything up, spend out 12 hours doing it. Then it worked great for a day, then nothing but errors. It's as if my calendars just come and go. One minute they calendars are there, the next the calendar is no longer on the server. Complete disaster, I will NEVER set up or suggest OS X Server for a calendar server ever again that's for SURE. And to think, it's just a webserver! Web servers are like the easiest thing in the world to set up. Apple has taken that, and turned it into a never ending nightmare.

All that said, if you have any experience with Apple's iCal server in Snow Leopard, I can get into some of the details and maybe you can help me find the problem with this thing.

pairof9s · Oct 5, 2010, 09:29 AM

Well not here to help but if misery likes company, then I'm with you!

We never got OS X Server 10.6 for the iCal Server but it was a nice addition to our small department in lieu of the overall office's Exchange offering (which yet no one uses the calendars!! Another example of the UI complexities that MS creates...but I digress). The thing that seems to be a bitch for us is trying to have individual calendars show up & operate properly on the server. We can get a general calendar that everyone can subscribe to, but that's not really what we want to use or need. Even there, it's buggy if multiple people are editing the calendar. Individual calendars will not show up either on the server or for other users to subscribe to; at best, it's an all or nothing process where you could have duplicate calendars on every client machine.

Bottom line is I don't have the manhours to spend experimenting with options and settings to find the magic bullet. Still, I'm hoping we get to use it at some time because it would be a great scheduling feature. Will respond if I ever reach Utopia!!

/

demani · Oct 5, 2010, 09:40 AM

Honestly, that's pretty much the general experience I've had as well. Do make sure your forward and reverse DNS is correct (if anything is screwy with Open Directory everything else can get crazy).

But pretty much my recommendation is to sign up for a free Google Apps account, and use that for Calendaring. At the least, it's more straightforward. But it works.

pyroplastic · Oct 5, 2010, 11:02 AM

I've had good success with iCal Server. However, setting it up is more demanding than you may expect of an Apple product though. You'll need to be (or wind up being) familiar with Open Directory, Mac OS X Server in general, and have a decent understanding of DNS. You should also be comfortable using on the command line.

It's critical to set up Open Directory and DNS resolution must be accurate forward and reverse. If you're using the Mac server for DNS I suggest deleting any default entries, adding your internal domain (maybe "mycompany.lan") and adding a machine entry for your iCal server (ical.mycompany.lan). Be sure to test DNS lookups for the iCal server forward and reverse (by IP address and by Host Name) to be sure that it works in both "directions".

DO NOT use ".local" for your internal domain. ".local" is utilized by Bonjour services and using it for your internal domain can cause issues.

Of course, you'll also need to configure iCal services for your users or groups in the Service Access Control List (via Server Admin). Otherwise, your users won't have access to the calendar.

Note that is you enable the Webserver/Wiki functionality you can view user calendars via a web browser. This can be a handy way to test calendar functionality outside of using the iCal application.

Finally, the apple iCal Server Admin v10.6 document covers most of the configuration steps in some detail. Hope this helps a little!

Good luck,
Scott

mduell · Oct 5, 2010, 12:53 PM

It's pretty turdy. iCal server was the #2 reason we moved to Exchange, after BES support.

l008com · Oct 5, 2010, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by pyroplastic

It's critical to set up Open Directory and DNS resolution must be accurate forward and reverse. If you're using the Mac server for DNS I suggest deleting any default entries, adding your internal domain (maybe "mycompany.lan") and adding a machine entry for your iCal server (ical.mycompany.lan). Be sure to test DNS lookups for the iCal server forward and reverse (by IP address and by Host Name) to be sure that it works in both "directions".

You've already lost me. I have a domain name that points to my external IP. And my external IP reverses to my domain name. My server is behind the router (10.0.10.2), with the iCal SSL port mapped to the server. Nothing else you said makes any sense to me??

l008com · Oct 5, 2010, 02:16 PM

OK so I just poked around in my DNS service and these are the zones that are there. This info was automatically generated but sure looks correct:

When I try to convert my server to an OpenDirectory Master, I get an error that Single Sign-On is not available because my DNS does not provide forward and reverse mappings for my server's domain name. What does all of this mean?

ChrisF · Oct 5, 2010, 07:24 PM

Originally Posted by l008com

OK so I just poked around in my DNS service and these are the zones that are there. This info was automatically generated but sure looks correct...

What does changeip report?

l008com · Oct 5, 2010, 08:07 PM

Actually I put the server's own IP into system pref's as the DNS server to use, adn then I was able to convert to an open directory master no problem. So now i'm making new users and importing calendar data from the old users to the new users. We'll see if this works.

l008com · Oct 6, 2010, 04:32 AM

OK so an update. I worked on this some more tonight. I used changip to change my server's hostname to server.madefenders.com

changeip modified my DNS settings a bit, so the way it's set up right now is:
server.madefenders.com points to both the internal and external ip.
Both IPs reverse to server.madefenders.com

And I changed the hostname in the iCal server settings panel to server.madefenders.com.
Oh and I'm getting this all out of order because I had another thread going elsewhere, but I did also get the server switched over to opendirectory master, and I did re-make all new calendar users as LDAP users. And I migrated all the calendar data to them. The server seems to be running well right now, however it would always run well for a 12-24 hours before it would start puking up all the error messages. So we shall see if this solves the issue or not. Hopefully it does. But somehow I doubt it.