How to correct / cleanup list of delegated calendars

Macs R We

• January 07, 2025 20:39

I'm trying to set up a small calendar sharing system on cPanel for the first time.

I have four users maintaining personal and resource calendars. Created them all fine, and populated their contents from our previous (discontinued) calendar server. Set up sharing and proper access controls among the four users.

When the old calendar server died, I wanted to rename the new calendars to be the same as they were on the old server (i.e., simply renaming "XYZ 2.0" to "XYZ"). In each account, I changed the name of the calendars owned by that account, expecting the other (share) calendars to change their names when their owner accounts did the same. After this process, cPanel in each account showed all calendars an account OWNED with the proper new name, but the calendars that were shared to them by others still showed the old (suffixed) name. The user devices also did not display the new names for their non-owned calendars, despite removal and re-addition of the CalDAV account connection. Attempts on cPanel to change the names on non-owned calendars in any account resulted in an error message.

So I decided to unshare all the calendars to make them disappear from each others' accounts, and then reshare them. After unsharing the calendars, I found they still appeared on the "Calendars and Contacts Management" screen for other accounts, from which I had expected them to disappear. Again, I could not directly affect the attributes or presence of any shared calendars on that screen.

Now, the users' actual devices are correctly showing the presence of only the calendars they own, and none of the shared (now unshared) calendars. But the cPanel "Calendars and Contacts Management" page is still polluted with obsolete information about calendars that are no longer shared.

I tried rebooting the server in hopes it would recalculte and repopulate that table, but it did not. How can I make this happen?

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  cPRex Jurassic Moderator

  • January 08, 2025 17:30

  Hey there!  I spoke with the email team about this issue and we weren't immediately able to reproduce this scenario on our end.  Is there any way you could provide a screenshot so we can see exactly what you are?

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  Macs R

  • January 08, 2025 21:48
  • Edited

  Best I can do takes about nine screenshots...

  Before I start, let me just say I got inspired yesterday and did a slash-and-burn job with emacs on the calendar metadata files to rip out all the unwanted sharing, and started over. It worked a treat, and my calendars are now working properly. But reproducing this problem for you, using two unused "junk" accounts (whose names are not significant), was pretty straightforward.

  I create a calendar "TestExample.ORIG-NAME" on the "calendar-server" account to share:

  

  I share it to the "trapbox" account:

  

  It doesn't show up until I configure a device to actually access trapbox's calendars, but when I do, it shows up like this:

  

  

  On the device:

  

   Now I rename the calendar in the owning account:

  

  The name in the account that shares this calendar doesn't change (not worth a screenshot because it's identical.) Now, if I try to change the name of the calendar in the sharing user's account (trapbox), I get an error:

  

  If I have the originating account unshare the calendar, it doesn't disappear from the sharing account. If I try to delete it at the shared account manually, I get an error:

  

  If I have the originating account delete the calendar completely, it still stays visible in the sharing account's management and configuration pages, and it still cannot be deleted. (Not worth a screenshot because they are identical).

  Note, however, that the calendar disappears just fine from the actual device that is accessing the sharing account, it's just the cPanel management pages that remain goobered up. (I checked only after deleting the calendar, I should have checked after unsharing as well, but didn't think of it, sorry.)

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  cPRex Jurassic Moderator

  • January 08, 2025 21:53

  I think anything that complicated would be best served through a ticket where we can see this in action.

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  Macs R

  • January 08, 2025 22:02

  It sounds complicated, but broken down into steps:

  1. User A creates a calendar and shares it with B, which works.
  2. User A renames the calendar, user B's cPanel never registers the renaming.
  3. User A unshares the calendar, user B's cPanel still shows it as present.
  4. User A deletes the calendar, user B's cPanel still shows it as present.
  5. User B cannot rename or delete the shared calendar from his account himself.

  I could open a ticket, but I'm not sure how that would contribute to exhibiting the problem. Or do you just want the ticket on file to document a problem to be worked? I may or may not be able to open a ticket; at times I get told that since I'm not the owner of the cPanel contract at my hosting provider, I have to go through some intermediary or other.

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  cPRex Jurassic Moderator

  • January 09, 2025 17:29

  Thanks for the detailed list.  I checked this and also had our email team check this and we just aren't able to reproduce this on our side on two machines, which is why I asked for the ticket.

  Since your license is purchased through your provider you are correct that you would need to reach out to them, and then they'd escalate the issue to us if they can't resolve it.

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