[Evolution] Empty LDAP Contact lists (Bad Search Filter)

["Thomas F. Dimson" <tdimson perimeterinstitute ca>]

Hello,

I am having a lot of trouble trying to get Evolution to sync up with the
exchange server that I have at my work. Currently, everything works
perfectly except for contacts - I can not seem to get them pulled from
our Active Directory service (LDAP). Originally, I specified the "Global
Catalogue Server" as one of our domain controllers (Saturn.pi.local) -
but despite being able to pick up personal contacts, it gives me the
error message of "Error loading address book. We were unable to open
this address book..." when I try to bring it up. This has been hard to
diagnose, so I decided to move on to doing LDAP directly.

Our domain is pi.local
Exchange version is 6.5.7638.1 (2003 enterprise)
Active directory is running with windows 2003 as domain controllers

I set up a contact list with the following information (our domain is
"pi.local"):

Under "general":
Name: "happychoochoo"
Server: "Saturn.pi.local" (this is a domain controller)
Port: 389
Use Secure Connection: No Encryption
Login Method: Using distinguished name (DN)
Login: Pi\tdimson

Under details:
Search base: DC=pi,DC=local (if I click find possible search bases it
picks up a list)
Search scope: Sub
Search filter: (& (mailnickname=*) (|
(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!(homeMDB=*))(!(msExchHomeSe
rverName=*)))(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(|(homeMDB=*)(ms
ExchHomeServerName=*)))(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=contact))(o
bjectCategory=group)(objectCategory=publicFolder)(objectCategory=msExchD
ynamicDistributionList) ))

(I picked up the search filter from our exchange server and ran some
tests using the windows LDP. It works there)

Now, what happens is that I click on the "happychoochoo" contact list,
and it asks for my authentication for pi\tdimson. I give it my password,
and everything seems to work, however no contacts appear. I can double
click and add a new contact, however all the fields are grayed out. If I
go back to my mail, click on "new" and press the "To:" button, it comes
up with a screen with no contacts however towards the bottom it says
"Bad search filter". I tried switching around the filter from the long
one, to a blank one and to "(ObjectClass=*)" but the error message
remains the same.

I'm wondering exactly where to go from here - I haven't been able to
find much documentation related to this. If anyone has any insight - or
needs more information please let me know. 

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it,

Thomas Dimson
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
tdimson perimeterinstitute ca