Scalix <-> Funambol alpha connector available

[philjohn]

Hi,

Good news, we now have a viable way to sync to a myriad of devices and applications by leveraging funambol. I released this to a few select testers last week, and since I haven't heard back any horror stories about data loss or the like I'm going to make it available to the larger community.

Before I give the link out, please remember that this is currently alpha stage software and there are 4 known issues (only 1 of which is in any way a show-stopper, and that is currently being worked on). I would recommend that this be extensively tested on a sacrificial account before you even think of rolling it out to users.

The connector is available from:

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/scalix-funambol

It will sync Calendar and Contact data. I'm working on the last Calendar issue (more on that below) and then will see about adding Notes and Tasks support.

The current known-issues are as follows:

* Setting a repeated item on the client will show in scalix as being at the wrong time (depending on your timezone). This is due to issues with conversion between calendar formats and should be fixed sometime this week.

* The connector cannot be run at the same time as the funambol-email connector due to different versions of the JavaMail library. I would expect you could replace the JavaMail mail.jar file in the funambol-email*.s4j file, but have not investigated this further.

* The Mozilla Thunderbird/Lighning/Calendar plugin cannot perform anything but a server->client recovery as there is extraneous whitespace in the data sent over-the-wire. This has been posted as a bug on their tracker before, so we are awaiting a fix on their end. I've been looking at fixes (stripping out the whitespace, or using Funambol pre-filters) but have not implemented anything yet.

* The connector is happiest if you sync using the sif* data types as they have been tested more than the others (vCard, vCal, iCal etc.)

If you find any more issues please help to further the connector by filing reports on the tracker. If you are adept at coding Java and would like to help out, that would also be much appreciated.

Thanks, and happy syncing!

[cartel]

Hi Phil,

I tried your connector and had some issues that I have detailed to you in PM.

Thanks

Tom

[jaime.pinto]

Hi philjohn

Are you aware of anybody working on a BlackBerry version of the Funambol Connector?
Thanks

[philjohn]

Hi Jaime,

The connector just takes care of the Scalix <-> Funambol part of the equation.

For using it on your blackberry (or any device/application for that matter) you will need a SyncML client installed on the device.

I cannot seem to find the Funambol one linked anywhere, but there is a (paid for) third party one called syncje

http://www.nexthaus.com/products_b_blackBerry.html

best wishes,

Phil.

[philjohn]

Of course, 30 seconds after posting I find the link:

http://www.funambol.com/opensource/down ... -3.0.7.zip

It allegedly does contacts and calendar, but since I do not have access to a blackberry I cannot say for definite.

phil.

[ioitest]

finally.. an alternative mobile solution. This has got to be the best news in this few months. The next good news will be the release of Outlook 2007 connector.......

[tomster]

Hi philjohn,

any news on V0.7? I must admit that you sort of got me hooked on Funambol. I'm just about to install it and give it a try. So a tad mor bug-fixed version of your connector would come in handy

--edit--

I just installed Funambol 6.5 and can't get it running with your connector module installed. Without it everything seems to work flawlessly. "Seems" because I would not know what to synchronize aside from Scalix

[philjohn]

0.7 has unfortunately had to be delay by a week or two as work is very hectic. Tie that in with my dev machine deciding to start dieing and I've been very busy indeed!

I also don't want to release 0.7 until I am sure that no data is lost during an update command as at the moment a few things don't carry through.

Sorry for keeping everyone waiting, but alas, real life gets in the way

[tomster]

No prob. It's not that I would rush you into releasing 0.7, I just wanted to get a quick update on when to expect it. And a rough 14 days sounds pretty good to me though this is damn close to Oktoberfest ((= me being out of order for some 16 days...).
Don't get run over by life. I'll try too

[interways2]

Hi philjohn, keep up the good work!

You are accomplishing what should have been done by Scalix guys long ago!!!

Thanks so much, we were waiting for exactly this...

[kluss0]

I tried to install the connector, but it doesn't show up as a module in funamboladmin. I can see the logging properties under server settings -> Logging -> funambol.scalix. But when I look under the modules list, I just have the default email and funambol foundation connector.

When I installed the scalix connector, I removed the funambol-email-6.0.3.s4j from the list of modules to install, but is still shows up in the admin console, it just doesn't work. What have I done wrong?

Thanks,
Kenny

[philjohn]

Try running the install command again, sometimes funambol doesn't install something cleanly the first time - I've never found out why.

There is some bad news however. We were reinstalling our mail server (upgrading to RHEL 5 for various reasons, mostly to have a newer version of subversion running) over the weekend and upon trying to download Scalix for the reinstall discovered that the download server was down.

Since we had to get the upgrade down over the weekend we were left with the only choice to us at the time, cross over to Zimbra.

It's actually a better fit for us, we can tie it into our Asterisk server, it's got an Apple iSync plugin (a very nice benefit as our main office all use Mac's), and for a small yearly fee we get WinMo device sync.

I was quite disappointed to be leaving Scalix, but it just wasn't a good fit for us anymore.

The upshot of this is that I have no Scalix install to test against and don't think I will for the foreseeable future.

The connector is in a state whereby it's mostly functioning, just updates are required to be implemented. The code isn't particularly complex, and all of the integration with Funambol side of things (arguably the most complex due to complete and utter lack of documentation) is complete. This means that someone with a fair knowledge of Java should be able to pick it up and carry on the work.

If anyone is intereseted, drop me a PM and I'll make you a project admin on the sourceforge site.

I'm really sorry I wasn't able to finish this, I really feel like I've let people who were really needing this functionality down

Hopefully Xandros can get Scalix competing on an even playing field vis-a-vis mobile sying.

[kluss0]

This is bad news!! Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Java development.

I think I found my problem, just not a solution. If I run the install script and say yes to rebuilding a database (any of them, not just the scalix connector DB), the install script dies with:

Code: Select all

/opt/Funambol/ds-server/install/install.xml:218: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/opt/Funambol/ds-server/install/install.xml:327: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/opt/Funambol/ds-server/install/install.xml:345: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/opt/Funambol/ds-server/install/install.xml:402: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/opt/Funambol/ds-server/install/install.xml:417: java.sql.SQLException: socket creation error


Every line mentioned in the error, except the last one, is an antcall line. I must be missing something on my system. So, I am off to learn about Java development :-)

Thanks for getting this project as far as you have.

Thanks,
Kenny

[kluss0]

Nevermind...... I'm an idiot.... The server wasn't running, so when it tried to connect to the database to re-build it, it failed. I ran the install while the ds server was running, and it went through like a champ.

My only question now is, if I can't run the scalix connector and the funambol e-mail connector at the same time, how to I sync e-mail, contacts, and calendars?

[philjohn]

Hi Kluss,

to sync email your best bet is simply to use IMAP to download mail to your mobile device.

If that isn't an option you could always rename the email .s4j file to .zip (it's just a renamed jar file, which is itself a zip file with some extra xml metadata). Then replace the mail.jar with the mail.jar from my Scalix connector, save the zip, rename back to .s4j and see it that works.

best wishes,

Phil.