Title says it all really! I am trying to come up with a way to sync my calender, contacts, to-do list etc between my desktop and laptop. I am still in the stone age when it comes to phones so I don't have to worry about syncing that.

I have been using google calender but would prefer to use all the functionality offered by Kontact if possible, as I am really liking KDE and would love having everything in one place with Kontact.

So the question is can I sync this type of information by shifting the relevant files (in kde/share/apps??) to my dropbox file, then inserting symlinks in their place on each PC?

Seems like it should be possible, but I don't know which files hold the relevant data, and I assume people will have faced this type of situation before as well, so any advice gratefully accepted.

Thanks in advance

Spoov

Moved to Office & Productivity.

Hm, good idea but not the best of timing with the phasing in of akonadi

Basically, everything not akonadi is in ~/.kde(4)/share/apps/ - so your mail stuff will be in kmail, calendar in korganiser, rss feeds in akregator, and whatever else you use. But that is not all, there are also rc files in ~/.kde(4)/share/config - again, that should be self explanatory.

kaddressbook has already been moved to akonadi and should reside in ~/.local/share/contacts

Bear in mind that the info is correct for KDE4.4.0 and KDE4.4.1 - don't know what is migrated next...

I wanted to try it, but my mail folder is 2.5gb, so a little big for the free dropbox - and I've been too lazy to sift through it and archive stuff.

Let us know if there is any other info you require. I don't see any problems with your suggestion. Mind though that you don't pick up your rss feeds to regularly so your upstream doesn't get its knickers in a twist

Actually, that's not quite correct - we all thought so for a while, but as more information became available, Akonadi data structure is explained on http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi_and_AddressBook. This is taken from directly questioning the developers. The other files that you are interested in are largely as toad said, but check the list at http://userbase.kde.org/KMail/FAQs_Hint ... #Migration for completeness.

How feasible your idea is, I don't know, but I'm sure many of us would be interested to hear how you go on.

Thanks, annew - seems I missed out on the mailtransports, emaildefaults and emailidentities files. Is that correct or am I missing anything else???

Cheers guys.

I have had success so far, though i've only tried it with Korganizer at the moment, but it works OK. I just shifted the one file, std.ics, and it syncs lovely.

I have a minor problem with dropbox not automatically syncing on my laptop, requiring me to restart the dropbox daemon from the command line on each bootup, but i'm working on that, it shouldn't be too problematic hopefully.

Yes, I think that's complete now. They are the less obvious ones, which is why I always recommend checking with the userbase page

@spoovy: when your tests are finished, assuming that they are successful, would you consider writing up the process on a userbase page? I'd give you any help you need.

Another thought. It might be prudent to miss out on the rc files as one computer is likely to be the desktop with a higher resolution than the other, likely to be a laptop or even a netbook.

If I tried to fit my desktop kontact view (1920x1200) onto my laptop (1024x768) I'd go ballistic. Correction - I did go ballistic when using freenx.

Or better still - create rc files edited to suit smaller screens (having saved yours first), upload those, then omit them from future syncs. Maybe that's what you intended anyway

Yep, whichever way (it's like roads and Rome and all that...). Just thought I'd mention it.

annew - I would be happy to write something up, i'll let you know how I get on in a few days. I should say though that I am an extreme newb at this stuff, I had never even heard of linux and barely touched a computer at all until 6 months ago, so I am right on the limit of my ability getting this far.

I have left the rc files out of the process btw. Makes sense for each machine to keep their own versions of these doesn't it? I only need the content synced.

I won't be trying this with email either, as I only use the 2GB free dropbox account, and only need to sync web-based email accounts anyway.

The *rc files contain the configuration used by Kontact and should be included, since otherwise they may be setup in slightly different ways, risking data corruption.

bcooksley - are you sure about that? I have frequently swapped my kontact data between two computers, I even put together a script for it leaving out *.rc files, and I have never experienced data corruption over the years. Leaning my head out of the window now, but as far as I can gather, *.rc files determine how data is displayed. They have nothing to do with the data itself. Please correct me, if I'm wrong

But another thought:

If I did synch kontact using dropbox, I'd be very careful to:

a) have kontact run on only one machine at any point of time
b) only start kontact once dropbox has synched all files

Bit of a bummer and likely to fail at some stage... Perhaps synhing with a central independent database is preferable - which, I believe, is done by kolab et all and requires a server. Akonadi to the rescue in KDE4.X?

Just wondering...

Akonadi doesn't support what you are after. Akonadi is effectively a "middle-man" for PIM data, gathering and caching it in a universally accessible manner for applications. It does not store any of the data itself. The data itself on the other hand, may be easily syncable using Dropbox... although i'd be careful not to change it in 2 places at once.