[Using Sakai] WebDAV & Sakai
Alex Ballesté
alexandre.balleste at udl.cat
Mon Feb 16 03:20:09 PST 2015
Some time ago I tried to figure out what was happening with windows. I'm
not sure what was my conclusion but I remember errors on windows when
webDAV was behind https servers and worked on http. Don't get it as a
solid clue because I really don't remember the results. Just I wanted to
add a point on what Daniel says.
Alex.
El 16/02/15 a les 12:14, Daniel Merino ha escrit:
> I'm sorry for being so late into this discussion about WebDAV. I just
> want to give some information that could be useful for others.
>
> -Even with Drag&Drop available and even if they must use WebDAV as
> simple FTP with Cyberduck, our users are big enthusiasts of WebDAV. At
> least while Drag&Drop specification doesn't include downloads of files
> and folders.
>
> -It's difficult to say where is located the failure when WebDAV fails,
> but I think that the best option is trying to connect to Longsight's
> 10.4 QA server. Latest WebDAV is located there and, for example, I
> cannot use WebDAV as a remote folder from Windows 7 in our 2.9.2
> server but it works fine when I connect to https://qa10.longsight.com/
> . Besides, Sam Ottenhoff commited to take a look on issues there.
>
> -There is a software to test WebDAV connections,
> (https://github.com/tolsen/litmus) but I found that our 2.9.2 passed
> the tests even not working on Windows 7. I don't know if there is a
> better option out there to test WebDAV, but I would love to hear of it.
>
> -We also found a propietary software (http://www.webdrive.com/) that
> worked fine with our 2.9.2 WebDAV, allowing to use it as a system's
> remote folder like Marshall demands. If you don't mind to pay, maybe
> this could be a solution in a short term.
>
> Hope it helps.
> Best regards.
>
> El 15/02/15 a las 23:20, Marshall Feldman escribió:
>> Laura is exactly right, although her comments point to a long-term
>> solution but I'm hoping to resolve this in the next week or two.
>>
>> Universities are fond of saying their faculties do teaching,
>> research, and service and that the three functions all contribute to
>> each other. But although not entirely, Sakai and other LMS's tend to
>> silo not only the three functions but within the teaching function
>> courses from each other and within individual courses separate
>> activities from each other. For example, if for my research I am
>> reading an article on my iPad and think, "Say, this would be a great
>> supplemental reading for both the research methods course and the
>> theory course I'm teaching this semester," how many steps must one go
>> through to share the article this way? It should be as easy as one
>> step: "Share with xxxx: Research Methods and yyyy: Theory for
>> Practitioners." But with Sakai and other LMS's today, we're talking a
>> dozen steps at least. And this is about as simple an example as one
>> can imagine.
>>
>>
>> On 2/15/15 4:23 PM, Laura Gekeler wrote:
>>> Well now you've gone and done it Marshall... all this WebDAV stuff
>>> aside, what we're really pointing out here is that we believe file
>>> system access to files in a Sakai course site repository should be
>>> accessible outside of Sakai, isn't that it? We'd like to use end
>>> points and sharing from many different places, including:
>>>
>>> * mounted and behaving like a native part of the OS file system.
>>> * using 3rd party tools like Cyberduck
>>> * and inside Sakai too, we should be able to copy or link to a
>>> Sakai file in another course site, if we want.
>>> * How about from inside an ePortfolio system, so students can
>>> choose the same file they submitted for an assignment, as part
>>> of a portfolio they're building?
>>> * What about learning analytics? At some point we're going to need
>>> to search files from their linked endpoints (or otherwise
>>> traceable copies) in our analytics data warehouse in order to do
>>> text mining of assignments in the spring of 2015, of sophomores,
>>> which received A's ....
>>>
>>>
>>> WebDAV isn't the solution (interim maybe), but something like WebDAV
>>> expresses the requirements for the beginning of a solution. Such a
>>> solution will be at the core of a learning ecosystem.
>>>
>>> IMO
>>> Laura
>>>
>>>
>>> Laura Gekeler
>>> LMS Administrator //Concurrent Instructor
>>> Teaching and Learning Technologies
>>> University of Notre Dame
>>> P:(1) 574-631-2402
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15 February 2015 at 16:08, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu
>>> <mailto:marsh at uri.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Chuck,
>>>
>>> I understand your point. For years Microsoft claimed to work
>>> with WebDAV, but Microsoft's implementation was notoriously buggy.
>>>
>>> OTOH, Cyberduck is primarily a file transfer program that can
>>> use any of several protocols, WebDAV being one of them. WebDAV,
>>> OTOH, is a way of using files on a web server as part of a
>>> distributed file system. Since in any file system one can move
>>> files, Cyberduck may do a very good job with this aspect of
>>> WebDAV on Sakai. But just because it can use this facet of
>>> WebDAV successfully does not mean Sakai's implementation is
>>> complete or without bugs.
>>>
>>> So as an end user, I'm still at this point caught between
>>> several parties pointing fingers. My local support person claims
>>> that Sakai doesn't really support WebDAV's distributed file
>>> system feature because Sakai keeps its files on varying machines
>>> in a cluster. Apple claims its OS works with WebDAV, and I've
>>> used it successfully with other WebDAV servers. So this also
>>> points to Sakai as the culprit. Some of the responses to my
>>> original query have implied that our local configuration of
>>> Sakai is at fault. Your reply implies that Sakai's
>>> implementation of WebDAV works, but Cyberduck functionality is
>>> not proof, as I said.
>>>
>>> So, I'll try a third rephrase of my question. I am concerned
>>> about Sakai providing "fully functional" WebDAV, to any
>>> operating system or app anywhere. By "fully functional" I am
>>> including the distributed file system aspect. By "app," I'm
>>> allowing for a more comprehensive app than Cyberduck, one that
>>> would actually make the local operating system see the WebDAV
>>> server as a mounted volume, thereby working around any bugs in
>>> the native WebDAV implementation. (For example, a company called
>>> OpenText
>>> <http://connectivity.opentext.com/products/network-file-system.aspx>
>>> sells a product that lets PC's share distributed files using
>>> NFS. It effectively adds this feature to Windows' native file
>>> system access.) So now the question is, "Can Sakai work as a
>>> fully functional WebDAV server with any operating system
>>> anywhere, whether through the operating system's native WebDAV
>>> implementation or through a third-party add-on?" Or more
>>> specifically, "Can Sakai provide distributed file system access
>>> through WebDAV to any operating system whatsoever, whether or
>>> not a special app provides this capability, so that files on
>>> Sakai are readable and writable through the native file system's
>>> built-in file access capabilities?" In other words, is the
>>> distributed file system aspect of WebDAV successfully
>>> implemented in Sakai at all?
>>>
>>> Marsh
>>>
>>> On 2/15/15 3:01 PM, Charles Severance wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Feb 15, 2015, at 1:21 PM, Marshall Feldman <marsh at uri.edu
>>>> <mailto:marsh at uri.edu>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So, to rephrase my original question, does Sakai support
>>>>> WebDAV client-server mounting at the level of OS X or Windows?
>>>>> In other words, does Sakai support genuine WebDAV as
>>>>> implemented on the two most common operating systems currently
>>>>> used in academia?
>>>>
>>>> Marshall - Sakai has a WebDav that we are confident works with
>>>> Cyberduck and *may* work with other operating systems. There
>>>> is no "formal commitment" that we will do "whatever" the OS/X
>>>> or Windows operating system happens to do.
>>>>
>>>> Having worked in standards and interoperability for a long time
>>>> - just saying "we are genuine WebDav" is not at all a guarantee
>>>> of interoperability.
>>>>
>>>> Our WebDav code is based on an WebDav from 2004 and we have
>>>> made a few improvements since then. The operating systems feel
>>>> no compunction to be careful in using WebDav to maintain
>>>> interoperability with anything other than their own
>>>> implementations. CyberDuck is more interoperable because since
>>>> they are neither Microsoft nor Apple - they need to be a little
>>>> more careful how they implement WebDav so as to remain
>>>> interoperable.
>>>>
>>>> Since our webdav is so old, it would take a lot of resources to
>>>> try to find and fix all the issues to guarantee it works with
>>>> Mac/Windows.
>>>>
>>>> If we had a lot of resources, we might start over with a more
>>>> modern WebDav protocol implementation like this:
>>>>
>>>> http://milton.io/
>>>>
>>>> So for now, we can use WebDav if it works but we don't consider
>>>> "WebDav not working on Windows" a "bug". We need to work on
>>>> things like getting rid of iframes :) Of course if someone
>>>> felt strongly about fixing it - they could take the initiative
>>>> and build us a new WebDav :)
>>>>
>>>> /Chuck
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Daniel Merino Echeverría
> daniel.merino at unavarra.es
> Gestor de E-learning - Centro Superior de Innovación Educativa.
> Tfno: 948-168489 - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
> --
> Experiencia no es el numero de cosas que se han visto, sino el número
> de cosas que se han reflexionado. (Jose María de Pereda)
>
>
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--
Alexandre Ballesté Crevillén alexandre.balleste at udl.cat
=====================
Universitat de Lleida
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University of Lleida
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