XCmail: Share addressbooks between different systems (draft to discuss)

[Jürgen Schmitz]

This sounds good. Maybe the auto addressbook is not required normally.

I'm still thinking of a way to share addressbooks - not only between users
but between differenc machines, some kind of roaming.

A typical way whould be to use LDAP or HTTP (like netscape 4). But because
XCmail is a mailtool with offline functionality I've though about sending
mail. But this required a special mail server which handles these mails.

The idea is this:

when started xcmail sends a request mail to this addressbook server (with
authentication, etc.) and the server will send the addressbook

when a new address is added or changed or removed a notice (diff) is send
to the server which will handle this and update the adressbook

But as told, this requires a special service as mta which handles this.
However, a part of the xcmail source with the addressbook backend whould
to most of it. And security is a problem - and synchonization because of
the delay between sending the request and getting the mail (especially for
POP3 users).

Any ideas here? It should be simple enough to work with .forward files if
users don't have other access or even with a running xcmail as this
service..... maybe with some subscription with will send updates to all
subscribed addresses when changes are made - so David's idea with shared
addressbooks for different users running XCmail at the same time can be
handled.

Jürgen


---Reply to mail from David Pilgram about XCmail: How to share addressbooks between 
users
> Hello.
> 
> Finally done this!
> 
> Method:
> 
> This must all be done in terminals, do not have XCmail running at all when
> you do this.
> 
> 1.  Back up all addressbooks!
> 
> 2.  For the main user (user1), give permission 666 to the two addressbooks:
> 
>     chmod 666 addressbook
>     chmod 666 addressbook_auto
> 
> 3.  For a subsiduary user, delete the existing addressbooks.
> 
> 4.  in the subsiduary user, link to the main user:
> 
>     ln /home/user1/.XCmail/addressbook addressbook
>     ln /home/user1/.XCmail/addressbook_auto addressbook_auto
> 
> This appears to work, but I am not responsible for anyone else who tries
> this and looses data etc.
> 
> Unfortuantely symbolic links do not work.  And one addressbook I want to
> do this for is in root, which is on a separate partition (and indeed HD)
> to the other accounts that I want to link it to... but this is a start.
>