Timezone issue using CalDAV

[lswindale]

Hi,

I'm running scalix 11.3 on fedora 7. I've just run into a problem with my calendar, with regards to timezones. I'm assuming that scalix takes the default timezone as that of the server (Brisbane/Australia). It all looks fine in webmail and through outlook, but when I download my calendar items to iCal (using CalDAV) all my appointments show up as being roughly 8hrs early. I've got timezone support enabled on iCal and it is set to Brisbane/Australia. When I open a calendar item it shows the correct start and end times but the timezone is listed as "africa/ouagadougou". I dragged the item to my desktop and viewed in a text editor (as an ics). The start time was detailed as "DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Ouagadougou:20080205T190000". Has anyone else had a problem with this? If so, was it an issue with Scalix publishing the calendar items or what iCal does with it? Cheers.

[lswindale]

Ok so I linked to the following URL to see what is actually sent from Scalix to iCal. It looks like the timezone specified in the response is set wrong. Any ideas about how to fix this?

URL: https://server.com/api/user@domain.com/ ... f207680a/3

Code: Select all

BEGIN:VCALENDAR

CALSCALE:GREGORIAN

PRODID:-//Scalix Corporation//Scalix Server//EN

VERSION:2.0

METHOD:PUBLISH

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:Australia/Brisbane

BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1100

DTSTART:19711031T020000

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;UNTIL=19911026T160000Z;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10

TZNAME:EST

END:DAYLIGHT

BEGIN:STANDARD

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

DTSTART:20010101T100000

RDATE;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20010101T100000

TZNAME:EST

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:(GMT+10:00) Brisbane

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T000000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:GMT +1000 (Standard) / GMT +1100 (Daylight)

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T020000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1100

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3

END:STANDARD

BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

DTSTART:16010101T020000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1100

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10

END:DAYLIGHT

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:GMT +1000 (Standard) / GMT +1000 (Daylight)

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T000000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

END:STANDARD

BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

DTSTART:16010101T000000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

END:DAYLIGHT

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:GMT +1000 (Standard) / GMT +1000 (Daylight)\r\n

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T000000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:Africa/Ouagadougou

BEGIN:STANDARD

TZOFFSETFROM:+0000

TZOFFSETTO:+0000

DTSTART:20010101T000000

RDATE;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20010101T000000

TZNAME:GMT

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:(GMT+10:00)

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T000000

TZOFFSETFROM:+1000

TZOFFSETTO:+1000

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VEVENT

...

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR


[gren]

Wow! That is quite unlike anything I've seen before. I could understand possibly defining 2 timezones in the ICAL but more than that is quite unusual.

How did you create these calendar items? I suspect you are dealing with raw ICAL as the code that deals with Scalix Calendaring messages does not support more than one VTIMEZONE definition.

Regards,
Gren.

[lswindale]

Thanks! Well if I'm going to mess it up I may as well do a good job of it .

The mailbox that this calendar belongs to was exported (via ExMerge) from a MS Exchange account to a pst and then imported into a Scalix account. Over that time items have been added via Outlook, windows mobile and webmail on both Exchange and Scalix. To me that sounds like fair potential for things to go bad.

So, how to fix this... I guess I could try creating a new calendar from scratch and re-adding the calendar entries... is this possible to do without re-creating the entire mailbox? Or (without knowing where the timezones are defined for a calendar) editing the calendar config to strip all references to the erroneous timezones. Suggestions?

Cheers.

[gren]

Hi, I would be interested in an sxmboxexp archive of the appointment in question if you are happy to provide that. It is possible that we will be able to learn from it and improve our handling of such messages.
My email address first part is gren.elliot. The domain part is scalix.com.

In terms of resolving this problem quickly for you, I fear the best way would be to recreate the appointment details in a new appointment and delete the old one.

Regards,
Gren

[lswindale]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I've already started re-creating the calendar (it wasn't really that big a task). I should have an ics file of the calendar before I touched it though... so I'll send it through if that helps. Thanks again.