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A story of success in syncing for beginners Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hi All,

First off, thanks to everyone who's posted helpful tips and websites about getting iphone syncing to work. It took me a few days, and a little frustration, but it's working. And I know a whole lot more about UNIX- bonus!

But I thought I ought to give some information back to the community, so here's how I did it.

First off, I'm running OS X leopard, so I'm not sure how these instructions will work on other systems.

I relied heavily on this website:

http://www.timefold.com/osx/tips/webdavical.html

As a note to others who are new to using Terminal/UNIX, the sudo command is very powerful, and you can do lots of bad stuff to your computer if you use it improperly, so consider yourself warned.

The first command opens the apache folder. The second makes a copy of the httpd.conf file, just in case you really mess up the original. I followed the first two commands, but opened and edited the httpd.conf file using BBedit (free demo version available at their website), instead of opening the file in vi and making the changes there. I placed "DAVLockDB /Library/WebServer/davlocks/DAVLockDB" below "DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents""

Other than that, I followed the website almost exactly in terms of the Terminal commands. I did replace dav/iCal with dav/omnifocus, to keep things straight. Also, while you're in the system preferences turning on web sharing, take note at the top of the name of your computer on the local network, after the sentence "Computers on your local network can access your computer at:"

When it comes to the section on publishing, there's a few differences. You can access the sync options through the preferences in omnifocus 1.1 (sneaky peek). Click on WebDAV. Replace the URL with "http://the_name_of_your_computer_on_the_local_network/dav/omnifocus" and click sync. If the gods are smiling upon you, you won't get a "sync failed" message. If you do, the website above has a few examples of errors, and what you can do to try to fix them.

If it works, you should then be sure that your iphone/ipod touch is on the same network as your computer, and the click the "share settings button" on your computer. Then open up omnifocus on your iphone/touch, go to settings, scroll down to "syncronization", click WebDAV, and then click "get settings from Mac." This should change the URL to the one you entered in your desktop version of omnifocus, and you should be all set. Go back to the main mobile omnifocus screen, and you should see a progress bar showing syncing.

That's it!

It's a kind of intimidating process, but I hope this will come in handy for other newcomers like me.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the info. Very helpful to have confirmation. I tried this once before and wasn't successful. Figured it might be me.

I decided to run through the steps - exactly - one more time.

I've gotten to the step of % ls -la .htpasswd and received the ls: .htpasswd: No such fiel or directory so I followed the "if the filedid not exist, do this step. I entered /usr/sbin/htpasswd -c .htpasswd omnifocus and received the following:

/usr/sbin/htpasswd: cannot create file .htpasswd

so I'm sort of stuck at this point.

Suggestions?
 
I had this problem too for a while. I ended up quitting Terminal, and giving it a rest for the night. When I came back to it this morning, everything was ok. Sort of mysterious. You might try quitting Terminal, and see if that helps. Is it possible that you have the httpd.conf file still open? That created some issues for me as well.

Sorry I can't be more help, but it was definitely a process of trial and error!
 
Tried quitting Terminal and going back in. Once back in I changed directories (cd /etc/apache2) then ls -la .htpasswd

Got same "No such file or directory". Entered /usr/sbin/htpasswd -c .htpasswd omnifocus - Still got "cannot create file .htpasswd"

Just to be clear - ls -la .htpasswd and the /usr/sbin/htpasswd -c .htpasswd omnifocus should be happening in the /etc/apache2 directory right?
 
I resolved the issue with .htpasswd

The file was in the wrong place. I actually turned on the visibility of hidden files and manually moved the .htpasswd file to the correct spot.

Went into OmniFocus sneakypeak and set the location to http://computername.loca/dav clicked sync now and it worked. Tried to then use the Share Settings option to push the options to the iPhone and it said it couldn't find the host. Tried sending the settings via email. Click on the link form the phone and it said it couldn't find host.

Changed the sync settings in OmniFocus to be my local ip instead of computername.local and sent the settings again. This time, it didn't say it couldn't find host, said it timed out.

So - I think I've got the local WebDav set up right on the mac. Now I seem to be having a timed out problem - which I suspect is a different issue.
 
Well - clearly I've determined that there must be something with my office network.

At home, on my local wifi network, using my computername.local/dav I was able to sync my iPhone and sneakypeak perfectly. Worked like a charm.

Very happy about that, but crazy frustrated that I'm now going to have to try and track down what about my local network is the roadblock. That will be a challenge.
 
with a little bit of fiddling I was able to get it working. thanks so much posting this!!!

when I couldn't create the .htpasswd file, I just created the file on the desktop (using path finder with invisible files turned on) and then copied it into the proper directory. from there, I ran the command that you were supposed to use if you already had an existing file, and that worked out fine.
 
I too had to do some fiddling and manually created and moved the hiddent .htpasswd file to the appropriate place. Works great.

I'll also add that I was able to determine that my issues with syncing in my office was due to an office configuration. Our network was purposely set up to prevent computers from seeing each other. However, we also have a parallel "public" network (public but actually secure) that does allow devices to see one another. When I switched my wireless connection to that that network, all was good.

Syncing now work at home and in office.

As a caveat, however, I'd still like to be able to make this work on box.net so I don't have to always been on the same network as my local Webserver. I figure that may come with some. So I'm happy for now.
 
 


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