Installing Evolution 2.29.3 with mapi plugin under Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic

UPDATE: 2.29.5 is available.

Just change the version number in the wget lines below in Step 2 and follow the remaining steps as below taking care to update the new version number where appropriate.

You should not need to uninstall anything in advance.

Download, compile and install the following 4 files…

gtkhtml-3.29.5.tar.bz2

evolution-data-server-2.29.5.tar.bz2

evolution-2.29.5.tar.bz2

evolution-mapi-0.29.5.tar.bz2

ALERT: This posting relates to an “unstable release” of Evolution.  Although you may improve functionality against an Exchange 2007 server, you may also suffer from degraded performance. Install at your own risk.

These are the steps I followed to install the very latest unstable development version of Gnome Evolution.  It requires you to upgrade a few components over what is included in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by default.

1. Run Applications menu-> Accessories-> terminal

2. Get the latest code tarballs by typing the following commands into the terminal window (note that we get two versions of the evolution code as the newest one appears to be missing a required file)

mkdir ~/evolution

cd ~/evolution

wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtkhtml/3.29/gtkhtml-3.29.3.tar.bz2

wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/evolution-data-server/2.29/evolution-data-server-2.29.3.tar.bz2

wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/evolution/2.29/evolution-2.29.3.tar.bz2

wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/evolution/2.29/evolution-2.29.3.2.tar.bz2

wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/evolution-mapi/0.29/evolution-mapi-0.29.3.tar.bz2

3. Get prereqs for building each of the packages by typing the following commands into the terminal window

sudo apt-get install libdb-dev libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev libical-dev libsqlite3-dev

sudo apt-get install bison intltool gnome-core-devel evolution-data-server-dev libcanberra-gtk-dev

sudo apt-get install libgtkhtml3.8-dev network-manager-dev libunique-dev libhal-dev

sudo apt-get install libgtkimageview-dev libpst-dev libnotify-dev

sudo apt-get install libmapi-dev samba4-dev libglib2.0-dev

4. Extract the source code from the tarballs with the following commands

tar xjvf gtkhtml-3.29.3.tar.bz2

tar xjvf evolution-data-server-2.29.3.tar.bz2

tar xjvf evolution-2.29.3.tar.bz2

tar xjvf evolution-2.29.3.2.tar.gz

tar xjvf evolution-mapi-0.29.3.tar.bz2

5. Now we should have a folder for each of the components under our ~/evolution folder, so we visit each folder in turn and build and install. Check for the screen for any errors, particularly after each install command, to see if the individual component built ok.  If you experience any errors, leave a comment here so that we can determine if a prerequisite is missing from your environment.

cd ~/evolution/gtkhtml-3.29.3

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd ~/evolution/gtkhtml-3.29.3

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd ~/evolution/evolution-data-server-2.29.3

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd ~/evolution/evolution-2.29.3

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd ~/evolution/evolution-2.29.3.2

./configure

make

sudo make install

cd ~/evolution/evolution-mapi-0.29.3

./configure

make

sudo make install

6. If everything built alright, you should now be able to launch Evolution and check in the Help menu -> About to confirm that you are running 2.29.3.2 now.  You should also have improved (but still buggy) calendar functionality if you have an Exchange 2007 email server  As stated at the top of this posting, this is an unstable release of code under very active development at the moment. Only try these steps if you can cope with Evolution not working or working intermittently.

If you are dependent on Evolution to work and it does not currently meet your requirements with the version you have already installed, then try the steps shown here.

Installing Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on Mac OS X Using VirtualBox

As some of you may know, I've upgraded or should I say tried upgrading my Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) desktop to 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Sad to say, the result was a disaster. Although the whole installation process was successful, I ended up having an unbootable system. Since I'm not yet in the mood to fix it, I decided to just try Ubuntu 10.10 by installing it on Mac OS X as guest OS using my favorite free virtualization software VirtualBox.

To those of you who would also like to install Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on Mac OS X via VirtualBox, here is a step-by-step guide (with screenshots) on how to do it:

1. Download the latest version of VirtualBox for OS X from HERE, and then install it.

2. Run the VirtualBox application and create a new virtual machine.

3. Allocate RAM to your virtual machine. The recommended amount of memory is 512MB but I decided to portion out 1024MB since my total RAM is 4GB.

4. Create a new virtual hard disk for Ubuntu.

5. Select the type of virtual hard disk. I recommend you use dynamically expanding storage for a more flexible disk space.

6. Decide on the size of disk space that will be allotted to your virtual machine.

7. The virtual disk will be created once you click on the "Done" button.

8. Turn on the virtual machine by clicking on the "Start" icon.

9. The first run wizard will appear to help you install the OS, in this case Ubuntu 10.10.

10. Select the media that contains the Ubuntu 10.10 ISO installer.

11. Since the installer was saved on my hard drive, I added it using the virtual media manager.

12. Once you are done, the Ubuntu 10.10 installation process will follow. If you are already familiar with Ubuntu, just install it like you normally would.

For those of you who have not used Ubuntu before, watch out for the Ubuntu 10.10 installation walkthrough on my next post. I will also give a screenshots tour and share with you my first impressions of using Maverick Meerkat.