Z-push

Z-push project is an implementation of the ActiveSync protocol, which is used 'over-the-air' for multi platform ActiveSync devices, including Windows Mobile, Ericsson and Nokia phones. With Z-push any groupware can be connected and synced with t

Mobile data synchronization is becoming increasingly important for many people, and various standards have arisen to perform this two-way copying 'over-the-air'. The most important platforms that can do wireless synchronisation are ActiveSync that is used to communicate with Exchange Server and Research-in-Motion's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Both solutions require proprietary server-side software from the vendor, therefore limiting the use of PIMs (personal information managers) to either wired synchronization or irritating 3rd-party synchronizers requiring the installation of client software on the PDA.

This is where Open source Z-Push comes in; it is an implementation of Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol which is used 'over-the-air' for multi platform active sync devices, including Windows Mobile and active sync used on Ericsson and Nokia phones. Open source Z-Push enables any PHP-based groupware package to become fully syncable with any ActiveSync-compliant device.

Being an opensource project under the GPL, it allows developers to add their own backend so that Z-Push can communicate with their groupware solution.

Currently, Z-Push is available with only four backends: the IMAP and the maildir backend for e-mail synchronisation, the vCard backend for contact synchronisation and one for the commercial Zarafa package which is sold by allowing full synchronization of E-mail, Calendar and Contacts. We expect that other backends arise in the near future as the opensource community gets to grips with the new possibilities.

Requirements:

� Z-Push runs on either PHP4 or PHP5 but requires the 'Mail' package from PEAR, so you may need to install the php-pear package on your system if it has not been preinstalled.

How to install:

To Install Z-Push, simply untar the z-push tar to your webroot, e.g. with

tar -xzvf z-push-< version >.tar.gz -C /var/www

Now, edit the config.php file in the directory to reflect your local system. For MAPI use with Zarafa, you needn't change any settings and should work as-is.

Please also set your timezone in the config.php file.
If you don't want to use the Zarafa backend, please move the backend/ics.php file to another folder or delete it. Otherwise, errors regarding the php-mapi extension will be displayed.

Make sure that the 'state' directory is writeable for your webserver process, so either change the owner of the 'state' directory to the UID of your apache process, or make the directory world writeable:

chmod 777 /var/www/z-push/state

Now, you must configure Apache to redirect the URL
'Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync' to the index.php file in the Z-Push directory. This can be done by adding the line

Alias /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync /var/www/z-push/index.php

to your httpd.conf file. Make sure that you are adding the line to the correct part of your Apache configuration, taking care of virtual hosts and other Apache configurations.

*WARNING* You CANNOT simply rename the z-push directory to
Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync. This will cause Apache to send redirects to the PDA, which will definitely break your PDA synchronisation.

Lastly, make sure that PHP has the following settings:

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
php_flag register_globals off
php_flag magic_quotes_runtime off
php_flag short_open_tag on

You can set this in the httpd.conf, in php.ini or in an .htaccess file in the root of z-push. If you don't set this up correctly, you will not be able to login correctly via z-push.

After doing this, you should be able to synchronize from your PDA.

What is new in this release:

• Improved iPhone support.
• A custom TNEF parser for meeting requests.