[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

[Ziegler, Jeff]

Hey Marshall,

From my experience, Sakai does work with WebDAV for the most part.  Can't help much if this is a problem with configuration/implementation within your instance, though. 

We've been using WebDAV with our instance for ten years and it was quite problematic in the early days mainly because of the spotty native support in the various OSs.  I can remember testing on two identical Windows XP machines and one would connect using the native client with no problem but I could't get the other one to work no matter what I tried.  Googling "WebDAV problems" gave me hundreds of links to people debating whether a given OS version worked with WebDAV and if not, how to fix it (mostly with fixes way too technical for the average user).

So I came up with a couple of free 3rd party WebDAV clients  that we started to recommend to our users.  Now, if a user can't connect and contacts our Help Desk, we recommend Cyberduck.  Estimated 99.9% success rate.

Hope this helps.

J


On Feb 12, 2015, at 3:58 PM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Last week I tried using WebDAV with our local Sakai implementation and 
> couldn't get it to work properly. So I asked our local Sakai support for 
> help using WebDAV on Sakai, but the answer I got back was really about 
> ways to use Sakai without using WebDAV (e.g., zip files to move multiple 
> files at once). So I wrote back and gave a description of what I want to 
> do and why only WebDAV or something very much like it (e.g., NFS) would 
> work. But in retrospect it seems to me this was also off topic. My 
> question simply is how does one make WebDAV work with Sakai, and if it 
> doesn't work with Sakai then why does Sakai advertise its use (in 
> Resources)? I never really got an answer.
> 
> The support person did briefly mention some technical issues which seem 
> to make WebDAV and Sakai incompatible. Here's what I understand. Our 
> implementation of Sakai runs in a cluster. When WebDAV first connects to 
> Sakai it connects to a specific instance of the Sakai file system in the 
> cluster. But during any given session Sakai may want to use a different 
> instance in the cluster. Since WebDAV is still connected to the original 
> instance, it breaks.
> 
> It seems to me that if this interpretation is roughly correct, then one 
> of these two implications is too. (1) Sakai is incompatible with WebDAV, 
> in which case the instructions in Resources about using WebDAV with 
> Sakai should be removed. Otherwise, they just waste everyone's time. (2) 
> Somebody actually went into Sakai's file management routines and 
> modified them so that WebDAV behaves properly. Perhaps this is an add-on 
> or particular settings for various parameters set when configuring 
> Sakai. But for some reason this feature has not been properly 
> implemented here at my institution.
> 
> Could one of you gurus enlighten me about this?
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"New != better.  Different != better.  Only better == better."

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Jeff Ziegler 
ITS Teaching and Learning Group
University of Michigan

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