[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

[Neal Caidin]

Gotcha.

Well, you could try asking the developer community

http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev

or you could check with the Sakai PMC governance group
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-pmc

It's an interesting point, but I'm not sure if it is a high priority within
the Sakai community at the moment. As I mentioned, I've seen a lot of
effort from Sakai developers in the past to support WebDav because of the
convenience it provides but there seems like in general there are more
alternatives available for the main use case (uploading and downloading
multiple resources at once) and WebDav seems like (AFAICT, not being one of
the devs myself) it is hard to support.

Doesn't mean that your use case is not a good one, just that there might
not be resources in the community to make it happen. If you brought
resources to bear on the problem, it might be something other institutions
would be interested in too, though so far it is not one that I've been
hearing about.

Thanks,
Neal




On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 10:08 PM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu> wrote:

>  We have Sakai 9.x, and I'm generally running Mac OS X on 4(!) computers
> in the process of being upgraded to Yosemite.
>
> I've been using Cyberduck for years, but I don't think it meets my needs
> in this instance. I need to store files on Sakai in Resources, organize
> them into folders, and be able to access them seamlessly from apps. For
> example, at home I have a NAS drive and  mount it on my iMac as if it were
> part of the local file system. (I believe this uses Bonjour.) Once the NAS
> drive is mounted, apps on the iMac can access files on it as if they were
> local. Of course this requires everything to be on the same LAN. WebDAV
> doesn't have this restriction.
>
> Unless I'm missing something about Cyberduck's functionality, it's
> basically an Explorer/Finder-like tool for transferring files. I need to
> use WebDAV to access files in real time, not to up- and download them.
>
>
>
> On 2/12/15 4:13 PM, Neal Caidin wrote:
>
> What version of Sakai are you using?
> What operating system are you using WebDav on (Mac OS X, Windows 7,
> Windows 8, etc.)?
>
>  I know a lot of work has gone into making WebDav work with Sakai, but it
> hasn't been easy. A lot of times the backup plan has been to use a 3rd
> party tool for the WebDav connection, like Cyberduck (seems to be the most
> popular). I assume that the problem is more on the WebDav technology than
> Sakai technology but not being a "guru" , I can not say definitively.
>
>  Starting with Sakai 10, we added drag and drop for Resources and that
> has proved to be a popular alternative to WebDav and easier to use. In
> Chrome, one can drag whole folders over. Other browsers individual files.
>
>  -- Neal
>
>
> On Thu, 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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>
>
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