[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

[Robert Long]

+1 on the Cyberduck recommendation. I have never had a connection issue with WebDAV and Sakai, nor has anyone else I have encountered.

--Bob

----
Robert Long
Software Engineer
Technical Account Manager - Sakai
Unicon, Inc.

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M.A., Instructional Technology
Saginaw Valley State University

> On Feb 12, 2015, at 14:29, Ziegler, Jeff <ziegler at umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> 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 <https://cyberduck.io/?l=en>.  Estimated 99.9% success rate.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> J
> 
> 
> On Feb 12, 2015, at 3:58 PM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu <mailto: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."
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Jeff Ziegler 
> ITS Teaching and Learning Group
> University of Michigan
> 
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