Mailing List Archive

Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra
Hello all!

I've been running a DAViCal server for my family members for several
years, and they've all come to really like it! Unfortunately, a family
member's Mac recently stopped being able to connect to our shared
calendar account. She uses the built-in "Calendars" client on her Mac,
and the client gave a not-so-helpful error about failing to connect to
the server (unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot).

Reentering the password to the account did not help, so I tried to
delete the account from the Mac's system settings and then recreate it,
but recreating the account did not work either.

Mac OS High Sierra asks for both a server address and a server path,
which I assume is just splitting the full account URL into two parts.
For reference, on my family's iPhones, I set the account URL to
http://192.168.1.210/davical/caldav.php/[DAVICAL USER NAME] and that
always works fine. But on the Mac, I repeatedly got an "unable to verify
account name or password" error, despite whatever combination of options
I tried. It's been a long time, but I don't remember having much
difficulty when I initially connected this Mac to our server.

All of our other devices and the server itself seem to be working fine,
so I'm curious whether a recent update might have broken CalDAV on Macs
(she did perform a Mac system update recently, though I didn't hear
whether the calendars stopped working immediately after the update).

Has anyone else had problems with High Sierra, or have an idea what
might be the problem? Any help that I could receive would be appreciated.

--
Aidan Montare
aidan@aidanmontare.net
https://aidanmontare.net/
Legitimate emails from Aidan are signed using GPG. See https://aidanmontare.net/contact/ for details.
Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
Am 21.12.18 um 04:40 schrieb Aidan Montare:

https ?

> Hello all!
>
> I've been running a DAViCal server for my family members for several
> years, and they've all come to really like it! Unfortunately, a family
> member's Mac recently stopped being able to connect to our shared
> calendar account. She uses the built-in "Calendars" client on her Mac,
> and the client gave a not-so-helpful error about failing to connect to
> the server (unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot).
>
> Reentering the password to the account did not help, so I tried to
> delete the account from the Mac's system settings and then recreate it,
> but recreating the account did not work either.
>
> Mac OS High Sierra asks for both a server address and a server path,
> which I assume is just splitting the full account URL into two parts.
> For reference, on my family's iPhones, I set the account URL to
> http://192.168.1.210/davical/caldav.php/[DAVICAL USER NAME] and that
> always works fine. But on the Mac, I repeatedly got an "unable to verify
> account name or password" error, despite whatever combination of options
> I tried. It's been a long time, but I don't remember having much
> difficulty when I initially connected this Mac to our server.
>
> All of our other devices and the server itself seem to be working fine,
> so I'm curious whether a recent update might have broken CalDAV on Macs
> (she did perform a Mac system update recently, though I didn't hear
> whether the calendars stopped working immediately after the update).
>
> Has anyone else had problems with High Sierra, or have an idea what
> might be the problem? Any help that I could receive would be appreciated.
>
> --
> Aidan Montare
> aidan@aidanmontare.net
> https://aidanmontare.net/
> Legitimate emails from Aidan are signed using GPG. See https://aidanmontare.net/contact/ for details.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Davical-general mailing list
> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/davical-general
>


--
Gruß Michael

Wenn du verstehst, was du tust, wirst du nichts lernen
BTW: Produktionsbremsen sind immer die Bürokraten


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Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
I think https is probably the answer. If I recall correctly, later MacOS
versions are getting less willing to authenticate over cleartext http
(check the "Use SSL" option on the Accounts page). I'm running my
DAViCal on a non-standard port number so I have that specified as well;
don't know if that's necessary when using port 443 or not.

Validating the TLS certificate may be a little tricky if you're using a
numeric IP address, though.

-Jim

On 12/21/18 2:58 AM, Michael Grundmann wrote:
> Am 21.12.18 um 04:40 schrieb Aidan Montare:
>
> https ?
>
>> Hello all!
>>
>> I've been running a DAViCal server for my family members for several
>> years, and they've all come to really like it! Unfortunately, a family
>> member's Mac recently stopped being able to connect to our shared
>> calendar account. She uses the built-in "Calendars" client on her Mac,
>> and the client gave a not-so-helpful error about failing to connect to
>> the server (unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot).
>>
>> Reentering the password to the account did not help, so I tried to
>> delete the account from the Mac's system settings and then recreate it,
>> but recreating the account did not work either.
>>
>> Mac OS High Sierra asks for both a server address and a server path,
>> which I assume is just splitting the full account URL into two parts.
>> For reference, on my family's iPhones, I set the account URL to
>> http://192.168.1.210/davical/caldav.php/[DAVICAL USER NAME] and that
>> always works fine. But on the Mac, I repeatedly got an "unable to verify
>> account name or password" error, despite whatever combination of options
>> I tried. It's been a long time, but I don't remember having much
>> difficulty when I initially connected this Mac to our server.
>>
>> All of our other devices and the server itself seem to be working fine,
>> so I'm curious whether a recent update might have broken CalDAV on Macs
>> (she did perform a Mac system update recently, though I didn't hear
>> whether the calendars stopped working immediately after the update).
>>
>> Has anyone else had problems with High Sierra, or have an idea what
>> might be the problem? Any help that I could receive would be
>> appreciated.
>>
>> --
>> Aidan Montare
>> aidan@aidanmontare.net
>> https://aidanmontare.net/
>> Legitimate emails from Aidan are signed using GPG. See
>> https://aidanmontare.net/contact/ for details.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Davical-general mailing list
>> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/davical-general
>>
>
>



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Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
Hi Aidan,

Mac OS has started to enforce SSL/TLS for caldav calendars, and it looks like your URL is “http” and not “https”. I managed to recently convert my server to serve davical via https and it wasn’t too painful. The worst of it was generating a self-signed certificate and getting your Mac and your iPhones to accept it … which wasn’t too bad, either, but it will have to be done every year, apparently (and every time you want your calendar on a new device) because the expiration date is a maximum of one year.

I love Davical, and thank the developers and this community for the rare privacy it affords, but I’ll probably eventually move my calendars to iCloud when I change hosting services because I don’t have time to dabble in IT like I used to.

Check the Wiki for info on hosting on SSL, and post again if you have any trouble.

Good luck! -Chris

> On Dec 20, 2018, at 7:40 PM, Aidan Montare <aidan@aidanmontare.net> wrote:
>
> Hello all!
>
> I've been running a DAViCal server for my family members for several
> years, and they've all come to really like it! Unfortunately, a family
> member's Mac recently stopped being able to connect to our shared
> calendar account. She uses the built-in "Calendars" client on her Mac,
> and the client gave a not-so-helpful error about failing to connect to
> the server (unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot).
>
> Reentering the password to the account did not help, so I tried to
> delete the account from the Mac's system settings and then recreate it,
> but recreating the account did not work either.
>
> Mac OS High Sierra asks for both a server address and a server path,
> which I assume is just splitting the full account URL into two parts.
> For reference, on my family's iPhones, I set the account URL to
> http://192.168.1.210/davical/caldav.php/[DAVICAL USER NAME] and that
> always works fine. But on the Mac, I repeatedly got an "unable to verify
> account name or password" error, despite whatever combination of options
> I tried. It's been a long time, but I don't remember having much
> difficulty when I initially connected this Mac to our server.
>
> All of our other devices and the server itself seem to be working fine,
> so I'm curious whether a recent update might have broken CalDAV on Macs
> (she did perform a Mac system update recently, though I didn't hear
> whether the calendars stopped working immediately after the update).
>
> Has anyone else had problems with High Sierra, or have an idea what
> might be the problem? Any help that I could receive would be appreciated.
>
> --
> Aidan Montare
> aidan@aidanmontare.net
> https://aidanmontare.net/
> Legitimate emails from Aidan are signed using GPG. See https://aidanmontare.net/contact/ for details.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Davical-general mailing list
> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/davical-general



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Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
On Saturday, December 22, 2018 1:04:41 AM CET Christopher Moore wrote:
> Hi Aidan,
>
> Mac OS has started to enforce SSL/TLS for caldav calendars, and it looks
> like your URL is “http” and not “https”. I managed to recently convert my
> server to serve davical via https and it wasn’t too painful. The worst of
> it was generating a self-signed certificate and getting your Mac and your
> iPhones to accept it … which wasn’t too bad, either, but it will have to be
> done every year, apparently (and every time you want your calendar on a new
> device) because the expiration date is a maximum of one year.
>
> I love Davical, and thank the developers and this community for the rare
> privacy it affords, but I’ll probably eventually move my calendars to
> iCloud when I change hosting services because I don’t have time to dabble
> in IT like I used to.
>
> Check the Wiki for info on hosting on SSL, and post again if you have any
> trouble.
>
> Good luck! -Chris

Note that let's encrypt exists nowadays, meaning that you can get a free,
automatically renewing, trusted certificate with very little setup.
All of your devices will accept it.

https://letsencrypt.org/

Cheers,
Bennett
--
GPG fingerprint: 871F 1047 7DB3 DDED 5FC4 47B2 26C7 E577 EF96 7808
Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
Hi,

> Am 22.12.2018 um 01:04 schrieb Christopher Moore <woodboatchris@gmail.com>:
> Mac OS has started to enforce SSL/TLS for caldav calendars, and it looks like your URL is “http” and not “https”. I managed to recently convert my server to serve davical via https and it wasn’t too painful. The worst of it was generating a self-signed certificate and getting your Mac and your iPhones to accept it … which wasn’t too bad, either, but it will have to be done every year, apparently (and every time you want your calendar on a new device) because the expiration date is a maximum of one year.

I've been using Let's Encrypt for several years now. That's even easier than self-signed, and works without forcing your devices to accept it. And is a necessity if you want to have other people's devices as clients.

Maik



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Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
Thanks for the Let’s Encrypt info: I’ll check that out when my self-signed expires!

Cheers, Chris

> On Dec 22, 2018, at 12:46 AM, Bennett Piater <bennett@piater.name> wrote:
>
> On Saturday, December 22, 2018 1:04:41 AM CET Christopher Moore wrote:
>> Hi Aidan,
>>
>> Mac OS has started to enforce SSL/TLS for caldav calendars, and it looks
>> like your URL is “http” and not “https”. I managed to recently convert my
>> server to serve davical via https and it wasn’t too painful. The worst of
>> it was generating a self-signed certificate and getting your Mac and your
>> iPhones to accept it … which wasn’t too bad, either, but it will have to be
>> done every year, apparently (and every time you want your calendar on a new
>> device) because the expiration date is a maximum of one year.
>>
>> I love Davical, and thank the developers and this community for the rare
>> privacy it affords, but I’ll probably eventually move my calendars to
>> iCloud when I change hosting services because I don’t have time to dabble
>> in IT like I used to.
>>
>> Check the Wiki for info on hosting on SSL, and post again if you have any
>> trouble.
>>
>> Good luck! -Chris
>
> Note that let's encrypt exists nowadays, meaning that you can get a free,
> automatically renewing, trusted certificate with very little setup.
> All of your devices will accept it.
>
> https://letsencrypt.org/
>
> Cheers,
> Bennett
> --
> GPG fingerprint: 871F 1047 7DB3 DDED 5FC4 47B2 26C7 E577 EF96 7808_______________________________________________
> Davical-general mailing list
> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/davical-general



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Re: Account Connection Issues on Mac OS High Sierra [ In reply to ]
I was able to create a Certificate Authority and self-signed certificate
for my family's devices. My server is now providing DAViCal over both
port 80 and port 443, and my family's iPhones and Macs are now connected
using SSL on 443. All the devices seemed to authenticate correctly.
However, calendar syncing is not working so well. The Mac fails to
refresh the calendar because the "connection closed", though it appears
that the server is running fine.

Anything I should be doing differently to configure DAViCal to work over
SSL and a different port?

Aidan Montare
aidan@aidanmontare.net
https://aidanmontare.net/
Legitimate emails from Aidan are signed using GPG. See https://aidanmontare.net/contact/ for details.

On 12/22/18 5:05 PM, Christopher Moore wrote:
> Thanks for the Let’s Encrypt info: I’ll check that out when my self-signed expires!
>
> Cheers, Chris
>
>> On Dec 22, 2018, at 12:46 AM, Bennett Piater <bennett@piater.name> wrote:
>>
>> On Saturday, December 22, 2018 1:04:41 AM CET Christopher Moore wrote:
>>> Hi Aidan,
>>>
>>> Mac OS has started to enforce SSL/TLS for caldav calendars, and it looks
>>> like your URL is “http” and not “https”. I managed to recently convert my
>>> server to serve davical via https and it wasn’t too painful. The worst of
>>> it was generating a self-signed certificate and getting your Mac and your
>>> iPhones to accept it … which wasn’t too bad, either, but it will have to be
>>> done every year, apparently (and every time you want your calendar on a new
>>> device) because the expiration date is a maximum of one year.
>>>
>>> I love Davical, and thank the developers and this community for the rare
>>> privacy it affords, but I’ll probably eventually move my calendars to
>>> iCloud when I change hosting services because I don’t have time to dabble
>>> in IT like I used to.
>>>
>>> Check the Wiki for info on hosting on SSL, and post again if you have any
>>> trouble.
>>>
>>> Good luck! -Chris
>> Note that let's encrypt exists nowadays, meaning that you can get a free,
>> automatically renewing, trusted certificate with very little setup.
>> All of your devices will accept it.
>>
>> https://letsencrypt.org/
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Bennett
>> --
>> GPG fingerprint: 871F 1047 7DB3 DDED 5FC4 47B2 26C7 E577 EF96 7808_______________________________________________
>> Davical-general mailing list
>> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/davical-general
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Davical-general mailing list
> Davical-general@lists.sourceforge.net
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