WebDAV and Windows XP

[Guest]

Using WebDAV (or Web Folders) on Windows XP with an Windows Server on the
other side is really terribly slow. In fact, I see it as unusable.

I tried with different client computers, Windows XP Home, Professional and
different servers (Windows 2000 Server, 2003 Server).

Copying files results in the progress bar going really fast to the end end
then it takes endless till it finishes, no way to tell how long it will take
cause the progressbar is useless.

Does anybody else have better experiences?
I used to have a Mac, and WebDAV was much more usable on Mac OS.
In fact, back than I tried WebDAV on Win XP in conjunction with a Apache
Server, and it was a better experience than my tries with Windows servers...

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem, from windows 2000 clients, performance is not a big
problem, but from windows xp client, only selecting a file in a webdav drive
can take 15 seconds.

 

[Paul Goodyear]

This is becuase Windows XP for some reason does NOT turn off the shell
extensions for webDav folders, so when you click a file it reads the
file to find out what it is. So if you select a 10MB jpg file over the
net, it has to download the hole file before you get a context menu.
Really pants

If there is a way to stop this I would love to know, until then, i'm
using DAVExplorer. Its a Java app and you cant select multiple files, so
it isn't that great, but its fast.

My Bro says its perfect/fast on Mac OS too

 

[Guest]

dodgetigger,

I cannot help you with your issue but do have a question for you.

Are you familiar at all with Mini-Redirector on the Windows client (vs. Web
Folders)?
If so, I am trying to find out if it can connect to a non-IIS webdav source
(i.e a java servlet running on a non-IIS Web container).

Just a shot in the dark since you mentioned a Windows client connecting via
webdav with an Apache server.

Thanks
- Tom

 

[Guest]

Are you familiar at all with Mini-Redirector on the Windows client (vs. Web
Folders)?
If so, I am trying to find out if it can connect to a non-IIS webdav source
(i.e a java servlet running on a non-IIS Web container).

It certainly can. There are some issues, though, that fortunatly can be
resolved. For example, Win XP likes to send the authentification to the
server like this:

Domain-Name/Username

Apache and I guess all the others except ISS don't like that very much. For
Apache, you need to install the Modul "mod_encoding" to get Win XP to
authenticate on an Apache server.

Also, it is a good idea to put the server on port 80. The Windows WebDAV
implementation seems to have difficulties connecting to any other port, not
all features are there if you connect to another port and connecting via
script is not possible at all.

Please note: All of the above I found out almost three years ago (I wrote my
diploma thesis about WebDAV in a mediadatabase environment), so maybe some of
these issues were resolved with SP2.

But my experience with the performance seem to have degraded over the years,
the installation of Office 2003 may have to do with it, I found different
behaviours for WebDAV on systems that had Office installed and ones that
didn't.

That's why I ask if there are different experiences with WebDAV, after I
have totally abandoned to use it for over a year.

All in all, WebDAV in Windows is pretty messed up, I think...

 

[Guest]

Very cool, thank you for taking the time to respond.

I am aware of the Domain name being prepended to the user name and MS did
give me a heads up about using port 80.

My Web Container is Web Logic running on Port 80. But I am at a loss as to
how to configure Web Logic in a way that satisfies mini-redirector. (I'm
assuming this is where my problem lies). When attempting to make a
connection to my servlet via a Net Use * http://myserver/webdav it appears as
though my servlet never receives anything, i.e. a breakpoint in the service
method of the webdav servlet is never hit, and the client just complains with
a fairly generic error.

Connecting to this webdav servlet via the "Add Network Place" wizard
successfully connects using what MS refers to as the "old" Web Folders mode
which is the pre-mini-redirector mode and appears to be more limited in what
it can do.

I may need to investigate something on the WebLogic side of things based on
your feedback...I'm just at a loss on where to find info since I've been
digging for a long time.

 

[Guest]

I may need to investigate something on the WebLogic side of things based on
your feedback...I'm just at a loss on where to find info since I've been
digging for a long time.

How does the servlet handle requests for a folder that don't end with a
trailing slash?
Like http://microsoft.com/share instead of http://microsoft.com/share/

The mini-redirector sends those requests without the trailing slash,
resulting in some servers sending a 302 Redirect, which the mini-redirector
does not understand, unfortunatly.

 

[Guest]

Hehe, I wish I could tell as it seems as though nothing ever actually gets
dispatched to my servlet.

I've played around more with my servlet deployment and am becoming convinced
that I may be running into this issue...
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=831805

My connection point is looks like http://<server_name>/MyWebApp/webdav where
webdav is the name of my servlet. I had WebLogic configured so that the
context root of AppName is "\MyWebApp". I could then see in my WebLogic logs
that when trying to connect from Mini-R, a request was being made to "/*" and
since there was no default web application defined it was just crapping out.

So I changed my <context-root> setting from "\MyWebApp" to just "\".

Now I get my breakpoint in my servlet and can verify via the User-Agent
header that it is indeed Mini-R that's making the call, but by changing this
<context-root> setting, it causes explicit calls to
http:<server_name>/MyWebApp/SomethingOtherThanWebDAV to not function and we
have many other servlets, jsp and resources available within this Web App
than just the WebDAV functionality.

If you have any other ideas, I'll gladly return and check in, but if not,
once again I really appreciate your responses. Take care and good luck with
YOUR issues!

 

[Guest]

My connection point is looks like http://<server_name>/MyWebApp/webdav where
webdav is the name of my servlet. I had WebLogic configured so that the
context root of AppName is "\MyWebApp". I could then see in my WebLogic logs
that when trying to connect from Mini-R, a request was being made to "/*" and
since there was no default web application defined it was just crapping out.

I have also seen this behaviour. I f you want to open http://server/a/b/,
the Win XP client sends a PROPFIND to http://server/a/.
So it should be sufficient if you grant PROPFIND for http://server/a/.