this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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First Time Self Hoster- Need help with Radicale (lemmy.zip)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by BlackSnack@lemmy.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

EDIT- The issue is having is with “Authentication”. I haven’t made it past that step. Incorrectly said “addresses” on the original post.

Yo yo! Fairly new to making a change towards privacy. My brother gave me a raspberry pi 4 and I want to experiment with that before making a bigger change towards my other electronics. Rn I’m working on using radicale on the pi4 and I’m stuck because I can’t understand the technological language.

I’m trying to follow the tutorial on the radicale website but am getting stuck in the “~~addresses~~” authentication part. I can’t enter in anything Into the initial command prompt I used to create the radicale website. And when I make a new command prompt and enter that in nothing happens. I asked AI and it spits out an answer that isn’t dumbed down enough for me. Lemmy is my last hope before I try Reddit …

Tutorial link for clarity https://radicale.org/v3.html#tutorials

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[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you mean this config option?

[server] 
hosts = 0.0.0.0:5232, [::]:5232

That is binding the service to a network interface and port. For example your computer probably has a loopback interface and an Ethernet interface and WiFi interface. And you can bind to an IPv4 and or IPv6 address on those interfaces. Which ones do you want radicale to listen to traffic from and on what port? The example above listens on all interfaced both IPv4 and IPv6 and uses port 5323 on all. Of course that port must not be in use on any interface. Generally using this notation is insecure, but fine for testing. Put the real IP addresses when you're ready.

[–] BlackSnack@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago

I thought I was stuck there but I misspoke. I made an edit to the original post. Thanks for the insight tho! In sure that’ll be helpful once I actually get there.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

https://github.com/tomsquest/docker-radicale

Don't try to run services without containers

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You absolutely can run services without containers and when learning and trying things out I'd say it's even preferable. Docker is a whole another beast to manage and has a learning curve of it's own.

Containers can of course be useful but setting everything up, configuring networking, managing possible integrations with other components (for example authentication via LDAP) it's often simpler just to run the thing "in traditional way". With radicale you can just 'apt install radicale' (or whatever you're using) and have a go with it without extra layer of stuff you need to learn before getting something out of the thing. And even on production setups it might be preferred approach to go with 'bare metal', but that depends on quite a few variables.

[–] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 6 points 1 day ago

Yes, I would recommend not using docker to run things when starting out.

Learn how to use the command line

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Docker makes is easier though especially with docker compose

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 4 points 22 hours ago

Maybe easier to get anything runnin quickly. But it obfuscates a lot of things and creates additional layer of stuff which you need to then manage. Like few days ago there was discussion about how docker, by default, creates rules which bypass the "normal" INPUT rules on many (most?) implementations. And backup scenario is different, it's not as straightforward to change configuration than with traditional daemon and it's even more likely to accidentally delete your data as a whole.

As I already said, docker has its uses, but when you're messing around and learning a new system you first need to learn how to manage the ropes with docker and only after that you can mess around with the actual thing you're interested of. And also what I personally don't really like is the mindset that you can just throw something on a docker and leave it running without any concern which is often promoted with 'quickstart'-type documentation.

[–] Svinhufvud@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

There is an official image in the main repo, https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale, ghcr.io/kozea/radicale.

[–] littleguy@lemmy.cif.su 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Don't listen to this person.

He's part of a culture that can't tolerate people doing things differently from him.

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 1 points 1 day ago

So you need to understand a bit more about addresses here. If you access the website from the pi it will be http://localhost:5232/ as the address using the defaults. Form another machine it will be http://ipofpi:5232/

As said below you need to make a file to specify that address, but the defaults given will end up with the above ip addresses. It is a http, not a https as well. So config the address used via the documentation and then access it how you'd like to. This is used because you can, if you wish, specify a different port (5232 is the default)

I hope that helps

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

radicale might be in your distro's package repos.

[–] darkan15@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I’m trying to follow the tutorial on the radicale website but am getting stuck in the “addresses” part.

From reading from the link you provided, you have to create a config file on one of two locations if they don't exist:

"Radicale tries to load configuration files from /etc/radicale/config and ~/.config/radicale/config"

after that, add what the Addresses sections says to the file:

[server]
hosts = 0.0.0.0:5232, [::]:5232

And then start/restart Radicale.

You should be able to access from another device with the IP of the Pi and the port after that

[–] BlackSnack@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I made an error in my original post. Please see the edit I made.

But I think I’m understanding a bit! I need to literally create a file named “/etc/radicale/config”. Then after that I need to copy/paste the configuration file/command line into said folder. Once I do that then I should be able to move onto authentication and then addresses.

[–] darkan15@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

But I think I’m understanding a bit! I need to literally create a file named “/etc/radicale/config”.

Yes, you will need to create that config file, on one of those paths so you then continue with any of the configuration steps on the documentation, you can do that Addresses step first.

A second file for the users is needed as well, that I would guess the best location would be /etc/radicale/users

For the Authentication part, you will need to install the apache2-utils package with sudo apt-get install apache2-utils to use the htpasswd command to add users

So the command to add users would be htpasswd -5 -c /etc/radicale/users user1 and instead of user1, your username.

And what you need to add to the config file for it to read your user file would be:

[auth]
type = htpasswd
htpasswd_filename = /etc/radicale/users
htpasswd_encryption = autodetect

Replacing the path with the one where you created your users file.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I set up mine through docker and it works great. I've switched from other CalDAV / CardDAV hosts and it really is the most stable and reliable.

[–] giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

looks like the "addresses" part is for the config file.

[–] BlackSnack@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 hours ago

I misspoke earlier. I wasn’t having issues with the addresses part, I didn’t even make it that far. I’m stuck on authentication. I updated the original post and added a pic for clarity.