I have the SurgeMail address book set up for CardDAV, and it is happily synchronizing to various Android devices and Thunderbird on Linux, but the Mac Contacts app stubbornly refuses to sync. SurgeMail address book sync worked on previous Mac OS versions.

I’ve tried various incantations in the Contacts accounts setup. It’s authenticating successfully according to what I see in abk.log, so I think the problem lies in the server path. Here’s an extract from the log file:

03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] Sabre ABK
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] need auth beforeMethod [PROPFIND-addressbooks/john@wilkes.com/Personal]
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH user=john@wilkes.com pass={hidden} hash=e4b70eb5ca725e140865d07c8b9fe292
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH Cached login expired (john@wilkes.com) age=3/1800
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] No cached login, trying IMAP
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH imap login SUCCESS (john@wilkes.com)
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH authorised=[YES]
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] Authentication SUCCESS
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] validating db entries :-)
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] principal already found
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH Principals Validated
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] login cache updated for john@wilkes.com
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] NWAUTH Authentication cached Validated
03/16/18 05:04:12 [12648] Sabre ABK END

A web search finds that lots of people have been unable to get CardDAV working with Mac Contacts. Most are using Apache OwnCloud. It was suggested that a redirect is needed: /.well-known/carddav ==> /owncloud/remote.php/carddav. I have a similar rule in g_url_redirect: from /.well-known/carddav to /abk.

I’ve specified port 7443 on my server and ssl required in the Mac Contacts server config, and the server path is /addressbooks/john@wilkes.com/Personal.

If I point my browser to myserver.mydomain:7443/abk/addressbooks/john%40wilkes.com I see a bunch of vcf files for my contacts.

As I said at the beginning, SurgeMail address book sync is working on Android devices and Thunderbird, so I don’t think the problem is on the SurgeMail side.

This is yet another sign that I should dump the Mac and move to a Linux system!

--
John Wilkes
john@wilkes.com

My life has been a series of tragedies and
triumphs, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.