Restoring Calendar Data from Clients after Server Crash

Question

xmddmx Author

Level 1

101 points

Restoring Calendar Data from Clients after Server Crash

I've had a bad server crash discussed elsewhere:

Re: ServerBackup : Restoring OS X Server from a Time Machine Backup

and

Server 4.1 lost track of ServiceData Location - all Calendar data gone

This is a small server with only 5 users, and I've decided the easiest solution is to start from scratch, rebuilding the user accounts.

The main problem is the loss of Calendar and Contacts data.

I just discovered that the client machines do have backups of these online calendars.

The way to restore these is as follows:

On the client machine, go to ~/Library/Calendars
you will see a bunch of folders. The ones you want are the ones that end in .caldav, for example AAAAAAAA-BBBB-DDDD-EEEE-FFFFFFFF.caldav
this folder represents one user account
inside this folder are XXXX.calendar folders, each of which represents a single Calendar within that CalDAV account
within that folder is an Info.plist file, which includes near the bottom the name of the calendar, e.g. <title>MyWorkCalendar</title>
Within the Events folder is where the gold nuggets are: individual .ics files, each of which represents one event.

Restoring these is easy:

In Calendar.app, create or select the calendar you want the events to go back into.
Select all the .ics files in a given Events folder, drag & drop into Calendar.app

I'm so glad I found these files as I was worried they were either missing, or buried deep inside my OS X server backup in some impossible to deal with SQL format.

Mac mini, OS X Server, OSX 10.10.3 with Server.app 4.1

Posted on May 22, 2015 12:16 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

xmddmx Author

Level 1

101 points

May 23, 2015 10:40 AM in response to xmddmx

Correction: the original instructions did not work properly. Here are revised instructions which do work:

The way to restore these is as follows:

On the client machine, go to ~/Library/Calendars
you will see a bunch of folders. The ones you want are the ones that end in .caldav, for example AAAAAAAA-BBBB-DDDD-EEEE-FFFFFFFF.caldav
this folder represents one user account
inside this folder are XXXX.calendar folders, each of which represents a single Calendar within that CalDAV account
within that folder is an Info.plist file, which includes near the bottom the name of the calendar, e.g. <title>MyWorkCalendar</title>
Within the Events folder is where the gold nuggets are: individual .ics files, each of which represents one event.

Restoring these is easy, but is a 2 step process:

In Calendar.app, click the Calendars button so the sidebar is visible showing your calendars
Create a new LOCAL calendar "On My Mac", e.g. "Temporary Home Calendar"
Select all the .ics files in a given Events folder, drag & drop into Calendar.app, dropping them on Temporary Home Calendar
Select the calendar and from the Calendar.app menu choose /File/Export/Export... and save this calendar to your hard drive (it will be an .ICS file)
Delete the temporary calendar
Now, you can select the Shared CalDAV calendar, and drag & drop the ICS file onto it : this should properly import all the data without errors.

Reply

Answer 2

xmddmx Author

Level 1

101 points

May 23, 2015 2:00 PM in response to xmddmx

I found a similar technique that works for Address Book (Contacts.app) data:

On the client machine, go to ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book
Make a compressed copy of this folder just in case.
Restore this folder from a known good backup using Time Machine
Launch Contacts. If you are lucky, the contacts will still be there in the server account
Select All of the contacts, drag them to your hard drive, which will put them all into a .VCF file format
Quit Contacts
Delete your Contacts account using System Preferences/Internet Accounts
Recreate your Contacts account using System Preferences/Internet Accounts
Drag & drop the VCF file back onto the server account.

Reply