iCal server - stay away if possible

Someone recently pointed out that most of my blog entries are about technology-relating things, and I apologize for that. I am writing this particular entry in hopes that if some other poor soul is googling for answers to their iCal server problems they may find this, and quickly run away.

I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I have wasted dealing with iCal server. iCal server was touted as one of the awesome new services included in Mac OS X 10.5 Server. I looked forward to it as many others had who were trapped in Outlook-based workplaces. A nice instance of an open source-based calendaring program (CalDAV) would be a godsend. I had staved off my higher-ups, keeping myself away from Outlook and Entourage completely. It was my turn to show them how great tings could really be without Exchange. I was wrong.

My first attempt was an upgrade install on my web server, one of the last G5-based Xserve's. The upgrade went poorly, the machine would max out on resources and lock up, and had to be restarted every 24 hours. This being quite unacceptable, I reformatted to 10.5 server. (I had previously backed-up my 10.4 server install, like a good little boy should.) The new instance ran fine, no problems at all. I quickly got my vital services back up and running, i.e. web, afp, ftp, and dhcp. Then I tried setting up iCal server.

The first error I got involved "no virtual host configured." What? No idea, but a quick google search later turned up I had to be running an open directory server. OK, so I set that up. I could now start iCal server. But, alas, now I can't enable calendaring for my current users because they are standalone users, not open directory users. If I switch them, they lose their home folders. Bah. My backup idea, create a new user, i.e. user2, to be their calendar account. I set up a test account and when I attempt to login with iCal I get a "you have no principals configured" error. Huh? Another Google search comes up with others having the same problem, but no solutions. I tinker for a while, and eventually get past that error to another one, "you do not have permission to access XX11111LETTERSANDNUMBERS string." That's it, I'm done.

This is a much abridged version, we are talking about days of frustration. I eventually gave up and just set up BusySynch, http://www.busymac.com/, a much easy solution to my group of four trying to share calendars between each other. I'm not alone in having problems, there are 600+ posts of people with iCal server problems on the Apple discussions site. Don't get me wrong, I think Apple does some great things, but iCal server isn't one of them. A new product like this should at least come with some documentation, anything, instead of none.

Here's hoping something gets worked out in 10.5.2 server.