Synchronizing: How do you sync / synchronize Calendar and Contacts with your desktop?

[Anna]

Happy Easter holidays to all of you!

Is it possible to synchronise the calendar/contacts on the Pinephone with your Linux desktop?

The easiest way would of course be to connect the calendar/address book to an online account – but I do not want to give the data of my friends to Google or any other corporation just in order to move it from my phone to the laptop right next to it.

I have come across two possible solutions: I could set up a Nextcloud server (which is probably immensely complicated, way too complex for the tiny task intended and which may not work) or use KDEConnect (of which I don't even know whether it works on the Pinephone).

Is there any simple way to do it? The company Palm, which used to produce so-called palmtop computers, apparently had a small desktop program called "HotSync" that one could start on the desktop computer and it would synchronise calendar, contacts and files via bluetooth or cable. Is there anything equally comfortable for Linux? And if not: What would would the complicated solution look like?

[Veraendert]

Vdirsyncer

[bitsandnumbers]

KDE Connect is still not available for GTK based phones DE, although implementation is on the way.
See : https://github.com/andyholmes/valent
With relevant issue on github : http:// https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/p...issues/514.

Status for Plasme Mobile can be found here : https://phabricator.kde.org/T8968

But it doesn't synchronize calendar or contacts AFAIK.

In addition to Veraendert solution, this thread has a somewhat simple solution with Syncthing and DecSync that seem to suit your needs (serverless).

[Anna]

After reading up a little I think that I would probably be able to implement that within a day or so.

It looks very promising.

Thank you guys!

[sfb]

Happy Easter holidays to all of you!

Is it possible to synchronise the calendar/contacts on the Pinephone with your Linux desktop?

The easiest way would of course be to connect the calendar/address book to an online account – but I do not want to give the data of my friends to Google or any other corporation just in order to move it from my phone to the laptop right next to it.

I have come across two possible solutions: I could set up a Nextbutt server (which is probably immensely complicated, way too complex for the tiny task intended and which may not work) or use KDEConnect (of which I don't even know whether it works on the Pinephone).

Is there any simple way to do it? The company Palm, which used to produce so-called palmtop computers, apparently had a small desktop program called "HotSync" that one could start on the desktop computer and it would synchronise calendar, contacts and files via bluetooth or cable. Is there anything equally comfortable for Linux? And if not: What would would the complicated solution look like?

I'm using https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/ on a raspberry (but it also runs on rock64) to do all the syncing, and this is one of the few things that work flawlessly with mobian. Takes less than a day to set up and takes trouble away for years.

[Anna]

I'm using https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/ on a raspberry (but it also runs on rock64) to do all the syncing, and this is one of the few things that work flawlessly with mobian. Takes less than a day to set up and takes trouble away for years.

That looks great. I especially like the "Easy to set up for non technical users" claim (even though the rest contradicts it a little…)

Presently I'm trying to set up SyncThing. I have installed it in two virtual machines and it indeed does synchronise particular folders. Once I have found out a few more things (first and foremost how to syncronise the files of the addressbook and the calendar and not only special folders) I will install it on the Pinephone and see if it works.

If it doesn't, I will check out NextCloudPi. Guess all this will take me weeks rather than days.

[NormandC]

KDE Connect is still not available for GTK based phones DE, although implementation is on the way.

I'm using GSConnect on a Ubuntu 18.04 PC with GNOME desktop and two Pinephones running Mobian/Phosh and Plasma Mobile.

KDE Connect can be installed on Mobian from the Software app.

An annoying thing is that I get tons of "low battery" notifications on my desktop (every 10 minutes or less), starting as soon as the phone's battery drains from 100%.

On Mobian the "phone ringing" menu doesn't work on my Mobian phone. It work on my Plasma Mobile phone.

You're right that it doesn't synchronize contacts nor calendar. You can manually send files from one device to the other.

[Uturn]

Nextcloud
is not that complicated, and some OS's will allow you to set up your Nextcloud in preferences under accounts. Others, like UBports Ubuntu mobile, look like, but don't work. Or Manjaro Plasma Mobile: This works for contacts but not for calendars.

vdirsyncer seems more universal and reliable.

[Anna]

Thank you guys for all your suggestions – so far I checked three of them (GSConnect is still on my list) with different outcomes:

Vdirsyncer
Unfortunately, I lacked the required knowledge and skills to understand the tutorial on http://vdirsyncer.pimutils.org and I could not find tips or even videos anywhere else. Someone very familiar with Vdirsyncer even advised me against using it since it was too cumbersome to use for the intended purpose. He instead recommended Nextcloud.

Syncthing
Is part of the repository and relatively easy to use -- I could set it up within a day. However, I could not find a way to synchronise calendar/contacts and if I did not miss anything, it's not possible without additionally using DecSync. Same problem as with Vdirsyncer: I could not find any info I could comprehend.

Nextcloud
Wonderfully easy to install and to get it to work. Calendar and Contacts on my desktop and on the Pinephone do indeed get the entries from Nextcloud, so it could potentially be the solution I was looking for. However, it does not work the other way around: The data from my desktop and from the pp  does not show up in Nextcloud. Also, the entries from Nextcloud are not saved in the standard files (/home/mobian/.local/share/evolution/addressbook(or calendar)/system/contacts.db (or calendar.ics) and I have no Idea where they end up.

Is it possible to set up Nextcloud in such a way that it 1. actually synchronises Contacts and Calendar in both directions and (maybe less importantly) 2. saves the entries in contacts.db and  calendar.ics?

Any ideas welcome … I don't want to give up at this point.

[Maus]

Oh well ... what a topic. Doing all this with a fully fledged desktop is easy, but along comes the Pinephone with its mobile user interface ...

I found it rather difficult to set up a remote calendar with Mobian. I learnt that in a Gnome environment, you use Evolution to set up such an account, but it completely failed to create an ActiveSync account, with error messages that float around the internet for years, but there seems to be no progress in that area -- these projects are all lacking manpower unfortunately. I managed to connect a CardDAV and a CalDAV account with Evolution, though, and had a hard time deactivating a lot of calendars and address books that had been shared with me previously and should not be synced to my phone. But in the end, lo and behold, I got a two-way sync for calendar and addressbook (though I must admit that I to this date only changed the addressbook on the phone).

One drawback of the Gnome calendaring backend seems to be incomplete handling of event exceptions. I previously had a phone with a kcalcore backend, and while it wasn't complete as well, it improved a lot over time and finally was perfectly usable for me. A solution could be to not use exceptions to events, but to create them one by one as separate events instead of series. Another solution could be helping to improve the software itself, obviously.

There is a multitude of things to nit-pick about in conjunction with this topic, but hey, this is a Linux phone ;-) (and ultimately, you could to something about it yourself).

So, in essence: it's working here, sort of. YMMV.