[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai

Marshall Feldman marsh at uri.edu
Fri Feb 13 11:08:41 PST 2015 

Right, but a central part of my point is that if WebDAV is reduced to up 
& downloading, then it's not much different from FTP, rsync, and similar 
alternatives. This raises 2 issues: (1) why bother with WebDAV, since 
it's known to be problematic on the client side and apparently, since it 
can't be fully implemented easily, on the server side too; use one of 
the alternatives instead. (2) If it's limited WebDAV, with only some of 
full WebDAV's capabilities, then this needs to be stated clearly; don't 
say "Sakai supports WebDAV," and then after someone like me wastes an 
afternoon trying to get a certain WebDAV feature working, say "Oh, but 
not that feature of WebDAV."


On 2/13/15 2:02 PM, Neal Caidin wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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
>>     <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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>
>

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