Sync private iCloud calendar with MagicMirror

Feedy88

@elliot1996 @duxnobis not sure if anyone is still following, but I was able to get the automated sync with a work around through cronjob. Step-by-step guide below:

Create Shell script

First we need to create the script which is actually executed by the cronjob. To do this we open a terminal and type

nano ~/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh

Within the editor we just write a one-liner:

vdirsyncer -vinfo sync

Close by CTRL+X and save by confirming with Y

Make script executable.

Within terminal type

chmod +x ~/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh

Test the script

Run a test if your script works. Within terminal type

bash ~/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh

If working as intended you should receive the feedback

Syncing iCloud_to_MagicMirror/YOUR-CALENDAR-UUID

Checking/Changing the Version of vdirsyncer

This was actually my biggest issue. I could sync successfully when running the script manually but the actual cronjob failed. Looking into Debug-Logs I found that the manual run used Version 0.16.8 of vdirsyncer while the cronjob used 0.16.7. After manually chaning the versioning if worked as inteded. To ensue you are not running into that issue, let’s check the versioning from the get-go. Within Terminal type

sudo nano /usr/bin/vdirsyncer

An editor will show you the following code:

#!/usr/bin/python3
# EASY-INSTALL-ENTRY-SCRIPT: 'vdirsyncer==0.16.7','console_scripts','vdirsyncer'
__requires__ = 'vdirsyncer==0.16.7'
import re
import sys
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point

if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.argv[0] = re.sub(r'(-script\.pyw?|\.exe)?$', '', sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(
        load_entry_point('vdirsyncer= q=0.16.7', 'console_scripts', 'vdirsyncer')()
    )

Change all three instances of 0.16.7to 0.16.8, close via CTRL+X and save with Y.

Create the Cronjob

Cronjobs are a great thing. It is pre-installed with UNIX based systems, therefore also with our Raspberry Pi. More information about Cronjobs can be found here. To set up a new cronjob, within Terminal type

crontab -e

The result will be the following code:

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
# 
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').
# 
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
# 
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
# 
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
# 
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
# 
# m h  dom mon dow   command

Type a new line at the bottom with the cron syntax. Here is an overview for the timings:

# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
# │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
# │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday;
# │ │ │ │ │                                   7 is also Sunday on some systems)
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * * <command to execute>

As for us it makes senst to run vdirsyncer every X minutes (I am going with 5 minutes in my case) the syntax looks as follows:

*/5 * * * *

followed by the script to execute:

bash ~/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh >> ~/vdirsyncer.log 2>&1

The first part should be familiar to you. What follows after the >> is a log we are creating. This will be helpful in case anything does not work as inteded. The full cronjob should look as follows:

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
# 
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').
# 
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
# 
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
# 
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
# 
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
# 
# m h  dom mon dow   command
*/5 * * * * bash ~/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh >> ~/vdirsyncer.log 2>&1

Close again by CTRL+X. You are now ready and have everything set up. The cronjob will start automatically on every startup and run the sync in the interval you have set it up.

sdetweil

@Feedy88 and if u edit your script and make the 1st line
#!/bin/bash

when the script is invoked it will launch the script using bash so all the bash symbols, redirection etc can be moved into the script, and you just use the script and to.launch it

/home/pi/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh

also, cron typically executes commands as root, so ~/filename will try to write to /root/filename, but not where u intended. so use the full path

/home/pi/MagicMirror/modules/calendars/vdirsyncer.sh

Feedy88

@sdetweil Thanks for the notes, but can you explain a bit more into detail. You mean, if I add

#!/bin/bash as first line to the script, I can also add the logging part and remove it from the cron?

To be honest, I’m quite a noob to Linux based systems and scripts. Nonetheless, hope my answer will help some people to get the sync going who have issues with the timer service from vdirsyncer.

sdetweil

@Feedy88 yes, if you use the exec command in the script you can capture stdout & stderr and pipe them to a file

LOG_FILE=filename

Open standard out at `$LOG_FILE` for write.

This has the effect

exec 1>$LOG_FILE

Redirect standard error to standard out such that

standard error ends up going to wherever standard

out goes (the file).

exec 2>&1

normal rest of your script

jlnxaer

Hello Guys,

I’m fairly new to the whole Raspberry Pi Thing.
I got the whole Calendar up and running. My only problem is, that it is not syncing automatically…
Do you guys know any fix for this problem?

The fix from @Feedy88 didn’t work for me unfortunately.

Cheers!

sdetweil

@jlnxaer did u create a cron job entry?

Tribun

@jlnxaer what does the pm2 log show? Are error messages displayed at the log?

I also had this phenomenon recently, as the calendar did not syncronize automatically. I had an error message in the log. I no longer know the exact wording of the report.
For me it helped to delete and recreate the files under /home/pi/.vdirsyncer/status and the created * .ics files. after creating the data again with “vdirsyncer sync”, everything now runs automatically as described in the instructions.

jlnxaer

@sdetweil You refer to this, right?

# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
# │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
# │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday;
# │ │ │ │ │                                   7 is also Sunday on some systems)
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * * 
*/5 * * * *

@Tribun The command for the pm2 log is just “pm2 logs” isn’t it? If yes there seems to be everything fine except for a “EADDRINUSE” Error…

EDIT: I just figured out, that I was missing a command after the Timings… I added that and now it seems to work just fine! Thank you very much guys :D

Tribun

@jlnxaer
(/home/pi/.vdirsyncer/status) is a hidden folder in /home/pi

you can also find the pm2 log in /home/pi/.pm2/logs this is also hidden.

Beh

Hi,

I have another hint related to the systemd timer that was originally described in my tutorial.
It is advised to download the vdirsyncer.service and vdirsyncer.timer directly from the web.

You need to adjust the path to the executable in the vdirsyncer.service file!
It defaults to ExecStart=/usr/bin/vdirsyncer sync, which can be wrong.

But probably it is in ~/.local/bin. (Can be different depending on your installation. Just check location with which vdirsyncer.

This should make the initially described automatic sync work again.