Sabre/baikal Web CAL/DAV Server Install & Get Rid Of Google Calendars

I’m starting to share my personal challenge in “How to get rid of scripts and websites, plugins, tools, and operating systems which are very useful, but unfortunately not usable: Part #1 - Google Calendar Alternative” (inspired by the series from kuketz)

If you own a webspace, where you can transfer files via FTP or SSH, then you might be interested in this little howto. You can easily host your own calendar-data, never have to use a third party again.

Ressources: (remove x)
xhttps://github.com/sabre-io/Baikal/releases/tag/0.8.0
xhttps://sabre.io/baikal/

I) Download zip file, unpack and
II) Upload whole directory to your server (could be any place, e.g. root or /yourdir/baikal, etc.)
caldavrootdirectoryonserver

Chmod for sub-directories needed:

  • Specific 755
  • vendor 755

III) browse to xhttps://yourdoma.in/path/to/baikal/html and finish the admin-user-setup
(by giving name, password, timezone, and auth-type. I was going with the default settings.)

IX) In the Dashboard of your new calendar-server you need to add a user first, to add later calendars to it. Use the top-menu-bar to navigate.
backendbaikaladduser

X) Next add calendars to your example calendar-user yourcalendaruser@yourdoma.in.

XI) After successfully created your calendars, you can access them with the following link (like you maybe know it from google-calendars)

https://yourdoma.in/path/to/baikal/html/cal.php/calendars/USERNAME/KALENDER-NAME

Username is your example yourcalendarname@yourdoma.in and we could access the calendar ‘Jobs’:

xhttps://yourdoma.in/path/to/baikal/html/cal.php/calendars/yourcalendarname@yourdoma.in/Jobs

If you want to include your calendar to e.g. thunderbird, you need to fulfill a password field for the first time, you call the calendar. Its the password for the user you’ve created. Save its password in your keyring and there you go. You can edit, include to your websites, share and collaborate. You will never need to use third party-software for sharing calendars like google, google, or öhm, google anymore. And this little useful free program, written in PHP, could be a very strong step towards your personal privacy rake avoiding tasks. :slight_smile:

If you want to download the calendar as a file, you can do easily by adding ?export to the url.

[...]cal.php/calendars/yourcalendarname@yourdoma.in/Jobs?export

Thanks for reading!

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Very good, thanks! (I use Radicale though, hidden behind Nginx / SSL).
Maybe it’s worth to mention, how we can make it really useful?
On client side John Bieling created exctiting TbSync and CalDAV/CardDAV extension for Thunderbird (seemless syncronization), and there’s the DAVx for Android. Ethar on Android is also way much more usable than stock google calendar…

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I’m using DAVx for Android and it works without problems so far. I spent some time with configurating my host for https. Do you have experiences with this Thunderbird Extension? I’m importing the Calendars via the inbuild menu, works even with many calendars.

These are actually 2 extensions.
You need TBSync for managing and syncing accounts. You need DAV-4-TbSync as provider.
They work for me well.
If I remember correctly, I added my calendars and contacts via TBSync.
We have a shared calendar, and evryone has his/her own calendar.
All of them work with TBsync.

And all in your microverse! :slight_smile: Could be interesting to have a complete list of software regards to CAL/DAV-ICS. I’ll check this. Maybe there’s something to find.

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Not a complete list, but there are the “alternatives considered”. There are some hints :wink:
Also here: The Five Best Open Source Calendar Servers for Linux - Linux.com
As client besides Thunderbird (with extensions) Evolution is usable too. Actually, I like Evolution a little bit better. There maybe something for the Macs too, but I don’t have any Mac, so I’m not involved that.
Probably @daniel.m.tripp will have some clue about Mac and Card/Cal-DAV ?

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I kinda hate “dedicated” calendar apps… Prefer to use google calendar through a browser… before that I only used my work’s calendaring system, i.e. mostly Microsoft (also - mostly in a browser).

But I’ve used Groupwise and Lotus Notes solutions - and THEY WERE BOTH CRAP! I still sometimes have nightmares about using Lotus Notes, PTSD…

I do have the MacOs calendar app opening up my google calendar, plus a bunch of iCalendars my daughters have shared with me, but I couldn’t be arsed trying to figure out how to integrate that back with Linux and/or my google calendar in a browser… it’s all to hard…

I remember birthdays and anniversaries anyway - I have to remind the missus when our anniversary is…

for a particular reason? :slight_smile:

It seems overkill - I used to have a tab open all the time in a browser with my google calendar… I don’t even do that anymore… like I said, I have a good memory for dates and years and stuff…

I have work stuff calendared in Outlook (and MS Teams) - and I don’t run ANY FAT email clients either - I just use a browser to look at ALL my email.

Dedicated “fat clients” is a 20th century concept, if it can’t be done in a browser tab, it’s probably not worth doing… and I say that facetiously, because I don’t run my terminal sessions (I usually have at least 10 running at any one time), or VLC playing TV, my music player, or MS Teams itself (note: MS Teams Preview for Linux is really just a compiled display of the teams web UI anyway) in browser tabs - nor my steam games, or text editors, or graphics apps like inkscape, gimp, AzPainter…

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