Google CalDAV/CardDAV via OAuth2 with GNOME Online Accounts (GOA)
=================================================================
Setup
-----
SyncEvolution depends on a GNOME Online Accounts with CalDAV *and*
CardDAV enabled for Google. This is hard-coded in the source code, so
recompiling is the only (sane) way to change that. CalDAV has been
enabled for a while, CardDAV is recent (>= 3.10).
It is possible to patch 3.8 without recompiling (see below). Versions
older than 3.8 do not work because they lack OAuth2 support.
SyncEvolution needs an active account for Google in the GNOME Control
Center, under "online accounts". Enable the different data categories
if and only if you want to access the data with the core GNOME
apps. SyncEvolution ignores these settings.
Usage
-----
OAuth2 authentication with GNOME Online Accounts is enabled by setting
username or databaseUser to a string of the format
goa:<GOA account presentation ID = email address | account ID>
Typically there is only one account using a Google email address, so
that can be used to select the account. SyncEvolution checks if it is
really unique and if not, provides a list of all accounts with their
account ID. Then the unique account ID should be used instead.
The base URL for each service currently needs to be given via syncURL:
syncevolution --print-databases \
backend=carddav \
username=goa:john.doe@gmail.com \
syncURL=https://www.googleapis.com/.well-known/carddav
src/syncevolution --print-databases \
backend=caldav \
username=goa:john.doe@gmail.com \
syncURL=https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2
Once that works, follow the "CalDAV and CardDAV" instructions from the
README with the different username and syncURL.
Debugging
---------
Add --daemon=no to the command line to prevent shifting the actual
command executing into syncevo-dbus-server and (from there)
syncevo-dbus-helper.
Set SYNCEVOLUTION_DEBUG=1 to see all debug messages and increase the
loglevel to see HTTP requests:
SYNCEVOLUTION_DEBUG=1 syncevolution --daemon=no \
loglevel=4 \
--print-databases \
...
Known Problems
--------------
When accessing CardDAV:
status-line] < HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
[hdr] WWW-Authenticate: AuthSub realm="https://www.google.com/accounts/AuthSubRequest" allowed-scopes="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/carddav"
...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<errors xmlns="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005">
<error>
<domain>GData</domain>
<code>authError</code>
<location type="header">Authorization</location>
<internalReason>Invalid Credentials</internalReason>
</error>
</errors>
...
[INFO] operation temporarily (?) failed, going to retry in 5.0s before giving up in 295.8s: PROPFIND: Neon error code 3 = NE_AUTH, HTTP status 401: Could not authenticate to server: ignored AuthSub challenge
...
This happens when using a GNOME Online Accounts which does (or did)
not request CardDAV access when logging into Google. Install GNOME
Online Accounts >= 3.10 or patch it (see below), "killall goa-daemon",
then re-create the account in the GNOME Control Center.
Patching GOA 3.8
----------------
It is possible to add CardDAV support to 3.8 without recompiling GNOME
Online Accounts. However, the downside is that this approach has to
disable access to some other kind of data and breaks when updating or
reinstalling GOA.
1. Locate libgoa-backend-1.0.so.0.0.0: typically it is in /usr/lib or /usr/lib64.
2. Open it in a text editor which can handle binary data (like emacs).
3. Switch to "overwrite mode".
4. Find the string starting with https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
6. Overwrite the part which you don't need with https://www.googleapis.com/auth/carddav
and spaces.
For example, if Google Docs access is not needed, replace
"https://docs.google.com/feeds/ https://docs.googleusercontent.com/ https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/ "
with
"https://www.googleapis.com/auth/carddav "
Here's a perl command which replaces Google Docs with CardDAV:
perl -pi -e 's;https://docs.google.com/feeds/ https://docs.googleusercontent.com/ https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/ ;https://www.googleapis.com/auth/carddav ;' /usr/lib*/libgoa-backend-1.0.so.0.0.0
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