Service discovery¶

Some clients - especially iOS - have problems finding the proper sync URL, even when explicitly configured to use it.

There are several techniques to remedy this, which are described extensively at the Sabre DAV website.

Below is what have proven to work with iOS including iOS 7.

If your ownCloud instance is installed in a sub-folder under the web servers document root, and the client has difficulties finding the Cal- or CardDAV end-points, configure your web server to redirect from a “well-know” URL to the one used by ownCloud. When using the Apache web server this is easily achieved using a .htaccess file in the document root of your site.

Say your instance is located in the owncloud folder, so the URL to it is ADDRESS/owncloud, create or edit the .htaccess file and add the following lines:

Redirect 301 /.well-known/carddav /owncloud/remote.php/carddav
Redirect 301 /.well-known/caldav /owncloud/remote.php/caldav

If you use Nginx as web server, the setting looks something like:

url.redirect = (
    "^/.well-known/carddav" => "/owncloud/remote.php/carddav",
    "^/.well-known/caldav" => "/owncloud/remote.php/caldav",
)

Now change the URL in the client settings to just use ADDRESS instead of e.g. ADDRESS/remote.php/carddav/principals/username.

This problem is being discussed in the forum.