Bug 747021

Summary: evolution does not show reminders for remote calendars that require VPN
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Jeff Bastian <jbastian>
Component: evolutionAssignee: Matthew Barnes <mbarnes>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 16CC: lucilanga, mbarnes, mcrha
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2011-10-21 06:39:53 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description Jeff Bastian 2011-10-18 15:20:37 UTC
Description of problem:
I have Evolution configured to use a CalDAV server (Zimbra backend) and it does not show any reminders.

This may be a fluke, but I turned on the checkbox for the Personal calendar from "On This Computer" and suddenly two or three weeks worth of reminders appeared.  This calendar is empty so I had unchecked it.  But then I created some test appointments and tried toggling Personal on and off and still no reminders appeared.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
evolution-3.2.0-1.fc16.x86_64

How reproducible:
every time?

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Connect Evolution to a Zimbra/CalDAV server
2. create an appointment on the CalDAV server in the near future with
   a 5 minute reminder
3. wait for reminder window
  
Actual results:
no reminder appears and so you miss the meeting

Expected results:
a reminder appears

Additional info:

Comment 1 Jeff Bastian 2011-10-18 15:34:24 UTC
I just noticed that evolution-alarm-notify is not running:
  [jbastian@localhost ~]$ pgrep -lf evol
  7750 evolution -c calendar


This doesn't look good:
  [jbastian@localhost ~]$ sudo grep evolution-alarm-notify /var/log/messages
  Oct 18 10:07:10 localhost kernel: [11976.817130] evolution-alarm[2061] general protection ip:408680 sp:7fff75221ab0 error:0 in evolution-alarm-notify[400000+11000]


I wonder why abrt didn't catch that...
  [jbastian@localhost ~]$ abrt-cli list
  [jbastian@localhost ~]$

Comment 2 Matthew Barnes 2011-10-18 15:51:10 UTC
Perhaps run evolution-alarm-notify under gdb and see if you can catch a backtrace.

The alarm program is started automatically when you log into your desktop session, but if it crashes or terminates for some reason it has to be restarted manually.  I've toyed with the idea of making it claim a D-Bus session bus name just so it could be easily reactivated, such as when launching Evolution.

Comment 3 Milan Crha 2011-10-19 07:19:36 UTC
Setting the need-info, because waiting for a backtrace. Please, make sure you have installed debug info packages for evolution-data-server and evolution itself. Thanks in advance.

Comment 4 Jeff Bastian 2011-10-20 13:53:08 UTC
I've installed the debuginfo and attached gdb, but it has not crashed again.  I don't think I'll be able to reproduce the general protection fault.

However, I've done some more testing and I think I see what's wrong.  The Zimbra server hosting my CalDAV calendar is only accessible through a VPN, so when I first login and evolution-alarm-notify launches, it cannot access the CalDAV server.  As a result, it never shows any reminders from it, even after the VPN is established and the full Evolution is launched.

After I have the VPN established, if I kill evolution-alarm-notify and restart it, all my missing alarms appear immediately.

Comment 5 Milan Crha 2011-10-20 17:27:18 UTC
Aha, makes sense. Please see discussion on this list [1], it contains the same case. There is nothing much to be done at the moment, I'm not aware of anything at the moment. Maybe when you open evolution, and go to calendars, and the calendar will be successfully opened, then the evolution-alarm-notify can listen for this change and update calendar's alarms accordingly. The thing is that without entering calendar it will not work, which is almost the same as it is now. 

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-hackers/2011-October/msg00022.html

Comment 7 Matthew Barnes 2011-10-20 19:05:12 UTC
Bug's not necessary, especially not downstream.  I'm well aware of the need for VPN-awareness.

Comment 8 Milan Crha 2011-10-21 06:39:53 UTC
I'm closing this per the above comment.