How to share Lightning Calender with Android

[Mildly_odd]

Hi, I find this a very confusing topic as all the resources I have found so far seem to assume much more awareness of how it all fits together.
So far, I have Thunderbird 52.9.1 running on Linux Mint 18.1. I have an Android phone (7.11). The main things I want to avoid are having to use any Microsoft/Google/Apple calender account service.

Prep so far:
The lightning set up guide here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ex ... a-calendar says
"Things you need: A server supporting WebDAV"
and they give a link that goes to the wiki page for WebDav which is too complex for me and doesn't give me a starting point I can work with. When I look through the "New Calender" setup in Thunderbird it takes me to a choice of setting up an "iCalender" or a "CalDav". Lastly, I have been looking for Android apps. I have found one called iCal Import/Export that boasts it can import any kind of calender and it allows me to choose the source of a calender as Web or WebDav and then it asks for an iCal URL.

What I think I have gleaned from this is that I need either
a) to set up some server of my own, with said WebDav, and presumably some sort of personal ID/account on it
b) to find someone else who runs such a server for punters like me
and also that
c) that these things called CalDav or iCal/iCalender might be related, but elsewhere I have got the idea that they might be Google or Apple related. I don't mind if they are open standards, less happy if it means they can data-mine my calender.

All my efforts so far on searching for things like "how do I set up a WebDav server/account" have so far simply led to forums with people who already have such a thing and have a problem with it.

Can anyone help suggest the next steps please?

[Mildly_odd]

Ok, the short question is actually just:
"How do I use the Lightning Calender on Linux Mint in conjunction with a phone using Android?"

[pun]

Ok, the short question is actually just:
"How do I use the Lightning Calender on Linux Mint in conjunction with a phone using Android?"

Or:
Any calender synchronised for Mint(LMDB4)<-->Android (5) (monopol)

[Mildly_odd]

Hi pun

Yes, exactly! thanks for spelling it out.

The only update from my side is that I'm now using Mint 19 cinnamon and Firefox 84.0.1

[MAlfare]

I do it with:

radicale server on my Linux PC (https://radicale.org/master.html)
Connected to a lightning calender, and via add on CardBook to a Thunderbird addressbook

On my Android phone the app DAVX5 (https://f-droid.org/de/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/) syncronizces Google Calender (Not with Google!) with radicales calender data and contacts with radicale addressbook.

It took its time, but finally it worked.

Edit:
No Apache, no PHP, no database server (like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL), no SQLite.
And no need to use a third party.

[pun]

Thanks all for your reports. As I am a "Dau" - German expression for people having literally no knowledge your attempts to solve the task is for me not possible.
So up to now I am stuck with my problem.

[dave0808]

I used to do this without any kind of server. As you have noted: Thunderbird/Lightning can import/export calendar information as iCal files (these have a .ics extension). You can copy these files to your Android phone, then use "iCal Import/Export" to read the file and import the data into the phone's calendar database. Then you can use a calendar app (Simple Calendar, aCalendar, or Google's Calendar) to view the information on the phone. This last bit often confuses people, and is just the way Android works, the database is separate and only Google's own app seems to support synchronization and calendar maintenance. To move away from Google, you have to use 2 apps, one to sync, the other for the calendar.

If you add an entry on the phone, then you have to reverse the process to see it in Thunderbird. Clearly this is a lengthy process and would only be acceptable if you are not updating the calendar very often.

To make the process much more efficient, you need a server. Note that WebDAV is for synchronizing files. CalDAV is for synchronizing calendar entries. CardDAV is for synchronizing Contact information ("cards" - like "business cards").

There are specialized server programs like Baikal, which are focused on just CalDAV (as I recall). Or you can go for many more features with something like NextCloud. Installing these yourself isn't difficult, but it isn't necessarily simple either. You need to install a web server (e.g. Apache), along with PHP interpreter, and optionally a database server (like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) - or if it is just you and your data, then you could use SQLite instead. There must be 100s of blog entries detailing how to do this on Mint (or Ubuntu).

If that is too much, there are plenty of web hosting providers that offer the service - either they specialize with NextCloud (for example), or they have an admin page that you can use to install it all in 1-click. The downside here is that someone else still has your data.

Once setup, you point Thunderbird at your server, and it uses its built in CalDAV client to sync the data. Then on your phone you can use "iCal Import/Export" to sync with the same server (though it doesn't support TODO entries, nor does it do CardDAV). Alternatively there is DAVx5 which supports all the DAV stuff. Then you use any calendar app as previously mentioned.

[AndyMH]

"How do I use the Lightning Calender on Linux Mint in conjunction with a phone using Android?"

As has already been said, you need a third party. For me this is my website hosting/email provider* who provides a calDAV service. Some NAS suppliers will also provide a calDAV server (and a lot more), e.g. Synology (and they provide guides on how to do it).

+1 for the android app DAVX5, I also use that, but -1 for the google calendar app on your android phone. I could NOT get it to work with my calDAV service (thought it was working, missed an appointment), installed a third party calendar app on the phone, which did work.

Don't use thunderbird/lightning, evolution user.

* not free, but not expensive, shop around. I've been with the same provider for coming up 20 years.