Fennel

Introduction

Fennel is a lightweight CardDAV / CalDAV server. It is completely written in JavaScript and runs within a Node.js instance. It does have some dependencies regarding JavaScript libraries, but all of these can be installed with the help of the npm.

If you are looking for a lightweight CalDAV / CardDAV, Fennel might be for you:

authentication is meant to be pluggable. While we concentrate on CourierAuth, you can add whatever can check a username and password.
the data storage backend is meant to be pluggable as well. While we start with SQLite3, we do use an ORM. Whatever database can be used with Sequelize can be used as storage backend for Fennel. You just have to change the setting accordingly.
instead of inventing the wheel, we prefer to use some of those fine node.js based libraries.
and after all, Fennel is OSS and is written in JavaScript. Whatever you do not like, you are free to replace / rewrite.

Status

Fennel is beta software and should be handled as such:

The CalDAV part is mostly done and now ready for a first public beta.
The CardDAV part is running and now ready for a first public beta as well.

Fennel is tested on Calendar on iOS > v7.0 and on OSX Calendar as well as with Mozilla Lightning. If you run Fennel with another client your mileage may vary.

What's missing:

different clients (we will somewhen test with other clients, but we did not do thoroughly yet)

Installation

First of all, you need a Node.js installation.

###nodejs on Debian###

Make sure that you have this line in your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://YOURMIRROR.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main

and then run:

sudo apt-get install nodejs nodejs-legacy
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/nodejs/ /usr/lib/node

then install the node package manager from source:

curl https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

###nodejs on OSX with homebrew###

brew install nodejs

###Installation of Fennel###

If you run Debian stable, then this is a bit of a hassle. If you run Debian stable and only then (and know what you do) update your glibc first to Debian testing. To do so, add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (replacing the xxx part):

deb http://ftp.xxx.debian.org/debian/ testing main

And then run the update:

sudo update
sudo apt-get -t testing install libc6-dev

Remove the testing line from your /etc/apt/sources.list file afterwards. Now follow the "normal" installation of Fennel.

If you want to run Fennel under a specific user (node), do this:

sudo adduser node
su node
cd
mkdir fennel
cd fennel

Go into the directory where you want to run your copy of Fennel and install with the help of npm.

cd /home/node/fennel
npm install fennel@beta

If everything worked according to plan, you should now have a new installation of the latest Fennel.

Now we want to make sure that Fennel runs forever. First install this script globally:

npm -g install forever

Then write the following lines into this file: /etc/init.d/fennel.

#!/bin/bash
#
# initd for the fennel app
# /etc/init.d/fennel

pidFile=fennel.pid
logFile=fennel_forever.log
sourceDir=/home/node/fennel/node_modules/fennel
rootPath=/home/node/fennel
nodeApp=server.js

start() {
   echo "Starting $nodeApp"

   # This is found in the library referenced at the top of the script
   start_daemon

   forever start --sourceDir=$sourceDir -p $rootPath --pidFile $pidFile -l $logFile -a -d $nodeApp
   RETVAL=$?
}

restart() {
   echo -n "Restarting $nodeApp"
   forever restart $nodeApp
   RETVAL=$?
}

stop() {
   echo -n "Shutting down $nodeApp"
   forever stop $nodeApp
   RETVAL=$?
}

status() {
   echo -n "Status $nodeApp"
   forever list
   RETVAL=$?
}

case "$1" in
   start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
   status)
        status
       ;;
   restart)
   	restart
        ;;
	*)
       echo "Usage:  {start|stop|status|restart}"
       exit 1
        ;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

And make sure it is executable:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/fennel

And make it come up automatically when booting the server:

update-rc.d fennel defaults

Or stop the script from coming up with this command:

update-rc.d -f fennel remove

Since Fennel does not bring it's own crypto, you may need to install a TLS server in front of Fennel. You can do so with nginx, which is a lightweight http server and proxy.

First prepare your /etc/apt/sources.list file

deb http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ wheezy nginx
deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ wheezy nginx

Update apt-cache and install nginx to your system.

sudo update
sudo apt-get install nginx

Now configure a proxy configuration so that your instance of nginx will serve / prox the content of / for the Fennel server. To do so, you will need a configuration along this example:

server {
    listen   443;
    server_name  carl.yourdomain.tld;

    access_log  /var/www/logs/fennel_access.log combined;
    error_log  /var/www/logs/fennel_error.log;

    root /var/www/pages/;
    index  index.html index.htm;

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /var/www/nginx-default;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8888;
        proxy_redirect     off;
        proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
        proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_buffering    off;
    }

    ssl  on;
    ssl_certificate  /etc/nginx/certs/yourdomain.tld.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key  /etc/nginx/certs/yourdomain.tld.pem;
    ssl_session_timeout  5m;
    ssl_protocols  TLSv1;
    ssl_ciphers  ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+EXP;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers   on;
}

Now run or reset your nginx and start your instance of Fennel.

Thats it, your instance of Fennel should run now. All logs are sent to stdout for now. Have a look at /libs/log.js if you want to change the options.

Configuration

All parameters which can be configured right now are in the file config.js. There are not much parameters yet, indeed. But Fennel is not ready production anyway. And you are welcome to help out in adding parameters and configuration options.

How to run

Point your CalDAV and CardDAV client to the root of Fennel. All the rest should be managed by Fennel via ./well-known URLs and the chat between your client and Fennel.

Contribution

If you happen to know how to write JavaScript, documentation or can help out with something else, drop us a note at contact at swordlord dot com. As more helping hands we have, as quicker this server gets up and feature complete.

Dependencies

For now, have a look at the package.json file.

License

Fennel is published under the GNU General Public Licence version 3. See the LICENCE file for details.

icesoar / fennel