OT? Problems accessing Google Calendar from a different location

[Thomas Boehm]

Hi all,

I don't know whether it is a Lightning problem or something on Google's
end, most likely the latter one.

People in my office started having problems when starting TB/Lightning
in the last few days. Lightning kept asking for username/password, which
always failed. After logging into Google on their website successfully,
Lightning seems to work fine.

It looks like it happens if the person travels to our other office,
which is in a different city. Only this morning there was one case,
where someone logged in into a different PC in the same location and got
the same problem. Though this PC is a laptop and was used the last time
in the other office.

Does anybody else have similar problems or does somebody know whether
Google restricts access to the calendar in any way? All calendars are
setup with CalDav, in case that matters.


Thanks for reading
Thomas

[Thomas Boehm]

Thomas Boehm wrote:
> I don't know whether it is a Lightning problem or something on Google's
> end, most likely the latter one.

> [...]

Just to add, it doesn't seem to be the "usual" lockout problem. When
logging into Goggle on the website, there is no captcha.

[Thomas Boehm]

Thomas Boehm wrote:
> Does anybody else have similar problems or does somebody know whether
> Google restricts access to the calendar in any way? All calendars are
> setup with CalDav, in case that matters.

Anyone?

This is becoming increasingly a problem for us. I'm getting calls from
people who travel and can't access their calendars.

Can anybody confirm whether Google locks people out when they try to
access the calendar from a different location via CalDav? I spent hours
already "googling" this problem but didn't find an answer.

Thanks
Thomas

[Thomas Boehm]

Thomas Boehm wrote:

> Does anybody else have similar problems or does somebody know whether
> Google restricts access to the calendar in any way? All calendars are
> setup with CalDav, in case that matters.

[WLS]

I know nothing about Google Calendar, or CalDav, but a search came up
with this wiki (needs updating).

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:QA_CalDAV_Support

Looks like CalDav access is broken, and in the Google Calendar Notes
section.

> CalDAV vs. GDATA: Google Calendar's CalDAV protocol support is an early prototype and is not recommended; users who just want to access their Google Calendar are much better off using the GDATA provider.

Have you asked Google?
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[Thomas Boehm]

WLS wrote:
> On 05/08/2012 05:55 AM, Thomas Boehm wrote:
>> Can anybody confirm whether Google locks people out when they try to
>> access the calendar from a different location via CalDav? I spent hours
>> already "googling" this problem but didn't find an answer.
>

> I know nothing about Google Calendar, or CalDav, but a search came up
> with this wiki (needs updating).
>
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:QA_CalDAV_Support

Oh yes, it really needs updating. Current Lightning version is 1.4 and
this page is talking about 0.9. I thought consensus in this group was to
use CalDav rather than the Google Provider.

> Looks like CalDav access is broken, and in the Google Calendar Notes
> section.
>
>> CalDAV vs. GDATA: Google Calendar's CalDAV protocol support is an early prototype and is not recommended; users who just want to access their Google Calendar are much better off using the GDATA provider.

We had more problems with the Google Provider extension. For instance
with one update, when somebody changed an appointment in a shared
calendar, it got moved into the person's personal calendar, which wasn't
even set up in Lightning. For the user (and everyone else) the
appointment simply disappeared.

CalDav seems to work much more stable, IF you don't get locked out from
Google. After login into the web calender everything works again. And
it's not that somebody logs in at the other end of the world, it's just
another town a few kilometres away or sometimes while travelling in the
same country. That's just security gone mad.

> Have you asked Google?

Yes, I asked in their support forum and no answer whatsoever :-(

I think I need to look for another solution, either our own CalDav
server or another provider.

Thanks for your reply
Thomas

P.S. Sorry for my double post. My first message only appeared hours
after I sent it and I thought it got lost somehow...

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 5/9/12 4:57 AM, Thomas Boehm wrote:
> We had more problems with the Google Provider extension. For instance
> with one update, when somebody changed an appointment in a shared
> calendar, it got moved into the person's personal calendar, which wasn't
> even set up in Lightning. For the user (and everyone else) the
> appointment simply disappeared.

This is fixed in the latest version of Lightning. I've also done a fix
in the Provider that will also make it work with older Lightning
versions. Not sure if that has been reviewed on AMO yet.

> I think I need to look for another solution, either our own CalDav
> server or another provider.

Try fruux.com, I've heard good rumors!

[Christoph Schmees]

sounds good, indeed. Only thing that puzzles me: The website says
"based in Muenster, Germany" but Firefox tells me that the server
23.21.76.52 is located in the USA. Huh?

Christoph

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email:
nurfuerspam -> gmx
de -> net

[Philipp Kewisch]

On 5/9/12 10:34 PM, Christoph Schmees wrote:

>
> sounds good, indeed. Only thing that puzzles me: The website says
> "based in Muenster, Germany" but Firefox tells me that the server
> 23.21.76.52 is located in the USA. Huh?

Maybe the company is based in Münster, but the servers are in the US?
Philipp

[Christoph Schmees]

Am 09.05.2012 19:51, schrieb Niels Baggesen:

> According to whois, the IP belongs to Amazon EC2 cloud
>

that means that privacy concerns still apply?

[Alan Lord (News)]

On 08/05/12 12:16, Thomas Boehm wrote:
>
> This is becoming increasingly a problem for us. I'm getting calls from
> people who travel and can't access their calendars.
>
> Can anybody confirm whether Google locks people out when they try to
> access the calendar from a different location via CalDav? I spent hours
> already "googling" this problem but didn't find an answer.

Hi Thomas,

I have several computers (desktops and laptops) and ~ 7 calendars on
Google that I connect to from Lightning using CalDAV (have done for years).

My laptop connects fine to Google when I am travelling so I do not think
it is a location issue.

I do recall however - getting very confused trying to setup a new
customer with TB/Lightining & Google; I couldn't get Lightning to
connect to Google at all... Eventually it seemed to be that if you make
repeated attempts to access/login to your Google account(s) in a short
period of time then it sort of locks you out. And the only way to reset
this was to login to your Google account via the web interface. I can't
remember now if it was caused by just lots of repeated logins or,
repeated *failed* logins, but it was something to with do with Google
and not Lightning.

Just to re-iterate, my TB/Lighting setup on laptops connect to Google
via CalDAV fine when I travel.

Hope this helps somewhat.

Al


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