[Kroupware] Trial run with kmail and outlook bynari plugin

[ralph escherich]

Hi,

I tried more around with kolab, the new kmail/calendar and outlook
using the bynari plugin. Its an excellent start, but not quite there
yet. Some features are still missing and some configurations
are not correct out of the box. Here are my detailed results:

1. SMTP authentication with postfix using outlook does not work.
   I added the  broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes switch to the
   postfix main.cf, but still it didn't work.
   The following variable has to be set this way:
   smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $mydomain.
   This is crucial, because smtp authentication seems to use
   <name>@domain as the ID for authentication. If
   smtpd_sasl_local_domain does not match the domain id part
   of your email address in the ldap database, authentication
   will fail with all clients.


2. outlook <-> outlook using the bynari plugin works well. I can   
   sent mail, notes, tasks and invitations for meeting. The mail
   ( well no real surprise) comes in in the right format

3. kmail/calendar <-> kmail/calendar
   works well. A lot of features are still missing in the KDE
   client, like gantt chart like calendar, automatic viewing
   of free/busy for attendees, accept, reject, propose new time
   features.....

4. kde client <-> outlook
   this does not work for me at all. Appointments sent from
   outlook are not interpreted correctly by kmail. Its showing
   up as a regular mail, and the vcalendar mime stuff is
   not looked at
   Appointments sent out by the kde calendar tool are recognized
   as an icalendar format, but there are not accept, reject ...
   possibilities in outlook. The messages are either not completely
   assembled or outlook does not understand them right.

5. free busy posting
   free/busy posting from outlook does not work with the ftp approach.
   I made a shared disk space though samba and that worked. I guess
   the ftp server coming from kolab is not configured right to allow
   anonymous access without a password.


Wish list:

- to be able to achieve easy migration from one email server to another,
  changing the email address should be possible. right now, once a user
  is put into the system, the email address cannot be changed.

- a check should be performed when kolab is started up (maybe part of
  the rc script) to check if any other daemons that are using kolab ports
  are running. I had some problem figuring out why postfix, ftp where not
  running properly.

- mime type vcalendar email between outlook and kde clients has to work
  I'll have a hard time migrating to kolab (and I would like to) if
  this essential feature is not working properly.... but I guess you 
guys are
  working on this anyway.

- using the unix id and passwd instead of storing new information in the 
sasl
  ldap database should be an option. Otherwise the double password mess 
starts
  again.

-- 
Ralph Escherich                               2900 Gordon Avenue Suite 203
Senior IC Design Engineer                     Santa Clara, CA 95051-0718
Phone:  408-328-9333               
Fax:    408-735-1163 

http://www.mobilesmartsinc.com