What's in this Release

A web client, Calendar Express, is provided as part of the Calendar Server. Calendar Express is JavaScript-based and runs on the Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. Other clients, including for PDA and wireless devices, will be available shortly. Calendar Express has the following features:

• Create and edit calendars (name, description, time zone) and calendar sets (a single composite view of multiple calendars), including support for:
• Multiple owners of a calendar.
• Simple access control (public or private read and write).
• Multiple time zones associated with calendars and calendar sets.
• Create and edit events and tasks (summary, date/time, location, description), including support for:
• Recurring (repeating) events and tasks.
• Notification and reminder (minutes, hours, or days before an event or task) emails to multiple recipients.
• Multiple views like overview, day, week, and month, including support for:
• Table, list, and condensed views.
• View (without login) of public calendars.
• HTML render of summaries and descriptions.
• Print preview.
• Find other calendars by id, name, or owner, including support for:
• Subscription to other calendars.
• Links to individual events in other calendars.
• Import and export of calendars in text/calendar or text/xml formats.
• Options to change appearance and default settings.
• Localizeable to other countries and languages; default is US English.

• Calendar Express UI Customization

A number of command line utilities to perform administration tasks is included with the Calendar Server. One or more users can be assigned as Calendar Server administrators. These administration utilities provide ways to:

Start and stop the Calendar Server.

Backup and restore the calendar database.

Create, modify, delete, or list calendars and their components.

Create, modify, delete, or list calendar users.

List or logout user sessions.

Display Calendar Server statistics.

Supported Platforms

Solaris 2.6 and 2.7 (SPARC) with recommended patches. See:

http://access1.sun.com/patch.recommended/rec.html
 

HP-UX 11.00 (PA-RISC1.1 or better) with the following required operating system patches:

    PHKL_18141
    PHNE_16017
See http://hp.com for information on these recommended patches.
 

Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4

Recommended Browsers

Solaris Tuning Recommendations

Configurable Kernel Parameters

• Dump kernel tcp settings.

/usr/sbin/ndd /dev/tcp \?
• Dump kernel tcp stats.

netstat -k [interface]
• Dump protocol stack summary stats.

netstat -s
Add these lines to /etc/system
set maxusers=2048
set ncsize=300000
set ufs_ninode=300000
• TCP connection has default hash of 256. SPECweb96 sets this to 262144. Add this line to /etc/system

set tcp:tcp_conn_hash_size=262144
• TCP CLOSE_WAIT interval. Solaris default to 240 seconds (4 minutes). SPECweb96 rules let you set it to 60 seconds. Add this /etc/rc2.d/S69inet

/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_close_wait_interval 60000
• Tune the TCP window size.

/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_xmit_hiwat 32768
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_recv_hiwat 32768
• Tune TCP slow start. It is advisable to set the initial congestion value to 2 since this is used by other vendors and will probably be the next standard anyway.  This gives slightly faster throughput for short, high-speed connections.

/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_slow_start_initial 2
• Tune TCP connection request queues.

/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_conn_req_max_q 1024
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_conn_req_max_q0 1024

HP-UX Tuning Recommendations

Configurable Kernel Parameters

1. Edit /stand/system to modify the kernel parameter you're interested in. This must be done with some care; the parameter must be listed exactly by name.
2. Run 'mk_kernel -o /stand/vmunix'. This builds the new kernel, kernel function set, and marks the kernel for replacement on reboot.
3. Reboot the system.

• max_thread_proc (maximum threads per process)

set to 8192
• nkthread (maximum threads in system)

set to 32768
• maxdsiz (max data segment size limit, heap memory)

figure 100K per concurrent user session, depending on the size of their inbox, a good number is 1GB (0x040000000)
• maxtsiz (max text size)

use 64MB (0x04000000)
• maxfiles_lim (max number of open files per process)

set to 32768
• nfile (max number of files system wide)

set to 65536
• ninode (maximum number inodes in memory)

set to 32768

NOTE: It is also a good idea to increase swap space. For example, on a 128MB RAM machine, 1GB is a good number.

Windows NT Tuning Recommendations

Known Limitations and Considerations

Administration

The cscal utility does not validate the name of a calendar (it's calid) as correct, nor does it validate that the owner or other owners are actual users. (368514)

Consideration: Please make sure you use a valid calid, owner, or other owner when creating or modifying a calendar.
 

(Solaris only) The csversion utility does not work.

Consideration: The Calendar Server version is logged in the server log file on startup. Each administration utility accepts a version command to display it's version. The csdb utility has a list command to display the version of each server database.

Calendar Express

Unable to login using Netscape Communicator 4.05 (367638)

Consideration: This version is not supported. Upgrade to one of the recommended Netscape Communicator versions.
 

If a user session times out, this can fail silently (no error dialogs) and some links (New Event and New Task) are removed until the user logs back in. (356996)

Consideration: The user session time out value can be increased by changing the service.http.sessiontimeout value in the server.conf file. The default is 1800 seconds (30 minutes).
 

Finding a calendar may only return a partial list of calendars.

Consideration: Only the first 200 calendars are returned. Narrow your search parameters to return less calendars.
 

Cannot save notification or reminder email addresses for linked events. (367015)

Consideration: Subscribe to the entire calendar or make a copy of this event in your own calendar.
 

Month view is changed to Overview view when the browser is resized. (365791)

Consideration: This is a browser problem.
 

(UNIX only) Javascript error when viewing details of a newly created event. (368305)

Consideration: Logout and log back in.

WCAP

Invalid RDATE, EXDATE, RRULE, and EXRULE property strings are kept when storing components or importing calendars. (354177)

Consideration: Use valid iCalendar property values.
 

A RDATE value without "Z" is not parsed correctly. (354748)

Consideration: The RDATE is stored in local time, instead of relying on a TZID parameter.
 

When importing a Date property, values without "Z" or a TZID are saved in GMT time. (355680)

Consideration: Values without the "Z" should be saved in local time; otherwise, always include the TZID.
 

Importing all day events in daylight savings are 1 hour off. (357440)

Consideration: Once these day events have been imported, adjust their times.
 

The set_calprops command does not validate owners. (358964)

Consideration: Please make sure you use a valid owner.
 

XML formatted properties with multi-values may not be stored properly. (355751)

Consideration: This can occur with the category and other owners property.
 

Fetching components by id does not work with fmt-out="text/csv". (368814)

Consideration: Use text/calendar or text/xml.

Calendar Server

Admin ports less than 1024 cannot be opened. (362800)

Consideration: Change the service.http.admin.port value in the server.conf file to have a value greater than 1024.
 

While the server is under heavy load, log files can get bigger than the limits specified by logfile.maxlogfilesize and logfile.maxlogsize. (357861)

Consideration: Periodically delete your log files or back them up to tape.
 

If the LDAP server goes down while the calendar server is under heavy load, a server process may become unavailable. (366618)

Consideration: Shutdown the Calendar Server until the LDAP server is back up or setup another LDAP server for fail over.

Potential Problems and Solutions

See also the previous section, Known Limitations and Considerations, and the following section, Corrections to the Documentation, for other issues that might affect product capability or use.

Installation

• Important note if you have downloaded a Unix version:

The tar files generated for download use the GNU tar utility. In most cases the "GNU tar" (also known as "gtar") and the native Unix "tar" commands are compatible. However, in this case they are not. At this time, you must obtain a copy of the GNU tar utility and use it to extract the files from the archive.

• For more information, including where you can obtain the GNU tar utility, refer to technote: http://help.netscape.com/kb/corporate/20000222-3.html

• Note: Neither Netscape Communications Corp., Sun MicroSystems Inc., nor iPlanet provide support for the GNU tar utility.

• (Solaris only) Error message "Installation of  partially failed". (364450)

Solution: This message can be caused by an incompatibility between the tar used to package the product and the one used during installation. Use the 'which tar' command to determine which tar was used. You must use the standard Solaris tar, which is usually found in /usr/bin/tar or /bin/tar
 
• (HP-UX only) No display when redirecting to a remote display. (365001)

Solution: This is a known problem in the HP-UX java sdk. Older version (such as 1.1.2) work but newer versions (such as 1.1.7) do not work. Use the '-nodisplay' option at the console.

Administration

None of the administration utilities will return to the command prompt and nothing is logged to the admin.log file. (367278)

Solution: Stop the Calendar Server. Then, in the <server-root>/cal/bin directory, remove the lock/__db_lock.share file.

Calendar Express

Microsoft IE 4.x clients are reporting scripting errors.

Solution: They may have an old version of the jscript DLL. Please have them go the Microsoft website to fetch and then install the latest version of this DLL.
 

If a summary with embedded HTML, it's display may span multiple days. (358674)

Solution: Remove the HTML or increase the size of the browser window. This will be addressed in future versions of this client.
 

Trying to create a Calendar Set that was just deleted can cause a Javascript error. (362517)

Solution: Close the Properties window after deleting a Calendar Set, then reopen this window to recreate the same Calendar Set.

Calendar Server

• The server can become unavailable if the file system it is installed on becomes full. (357995)

Solution: You should periodically monitor the disk usage and if it gets close to becoming full, free up some disk space or add more disks. An unsupported disk usage monitor, csmonitord, is provided to send email to a list of addresses when a configured threshold is reached.
 
• Server performance is slower than expected for your machine configuration.

Solution: Edit the server.conf file.
• Increase the number of processes to match the number of CPUs:

service.http.numprocesses 4
• Put the calendar database on a large and fast RAID disk partition:

caldb.berkeleydb.logdirectory "/fastdisk"
caldb.berkeleydb.homedirectory "/fastdisk"
• Put the http caches on a large and fast RAID disk partition:

service.http.dbcachesize "/fastdisk2"
service.http.dbtmpdir "/fastdisk2"
service.http.attachdir "/fastdisk2"
• Reduce logging verbosity:

logfile.loglevel "Warning"

 
• You have more than 100,000 configured users.

Solution: Edit the server.conf file:
• Increase the authentication cache:

service.authcachesize "500000"
service.authcachettl "172800"

 
• If you have more than 5,000 logged-in users per CPU.

Solution: Edit the server.conf file:
• Increase the maximum number of sessions:

service.http.maxsessions "10000"

 
• If you have more than 1,000 concurrent connections per CPU.

Solution: Edit the server.conf file:
• Increase the maximum number of client threads:

service.http.maxthreads  "2000"

Corrections to the Documentation

How to Report Problems

Where to Go for More Information

For the Calendar Server installation instructions, visit:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/calendar.html

For the Netscape Directory Server 4.1 installation instructions, visit:
http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/directory/4.1/install/contents.htm

If you can't find the information you need, please contact Netscape technical support.

Where to Go for More Information For the Calendar Server Administrator's Guide and related documents, visit:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/calendar.html

For the Calendar Server installation instructions, visit:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/calendar.html

For the Netscape Directory Server 4.1 installation instructions, visit:
http://home.netscape.com/eng/server/directory/4.1/install/contents.htm

If you can't find the information you need, please contact iPlanet technical support.