Networking
Google Calendar – Thunderbird – Lightning
I just succeeded in making my Google Calendar usable from Thunderbird. It took only some easy steps:
- Install “Lightning”, a Thunderbird calendar addon
- Install “Provider for Google Calendar”, an extension to Lightning
- Copy the private XML URLs of my calendars in order to create corresponding calendars in Lightning
The provider for Google Calendar is the most important component because it enables bidirectional communication with Google. Lightning itself can only read calendar entries.
If you need more info on this, try Google ;)
Update: It’s not really working atm, I’m repeatedly asked for my Google credentials when I start Thunderbird. I posted a question related to this problem, currently waiting for an answer.
Openswan fun
I’m currently trying to build a VPN tunnel to a work-related ISP in order to have transparent VPN access instead of using the Cisco VPN client. So far, I have managed to build the ipsec module for a 2.6 kernel, going “back to the roots” because the standard Debian ways of building modules wouldn’t work with the provided source code packages. In the end, I downloaded the Openswan source code and compiled it directly, ignoring the usual Debian way. This worked out fine and I have a loadable ipsec kernel module now. Right now, I’m working on the ipsec configuration, trying to get the tunnel initiation work over NAT. I’ll keep posting on this topic in order to describe progress and pitfalls.
OpenVPN vs. Vista
Being a happy XP user, I am glad that this problem does not affect me. However, should you run into trouble using OpenVPN on Vista, read that article :)