Can't get attachement-syncing with webDAV working

JonasEpple · January 19, 2021

Hi :)

I am using Zotero for more than a year now and I am really happy with it. Sadly, over the time, my attachements now exceeds the 300MB free Zotero Storage. I really want my files synchronised, so i was glad when I found out that Zotero supports the sync of attachements via webDAV.
Though trying to set it up with my university's webDAV leaded to the following (oddly formated - in the error box, unlike in this comment-box, the html doesn't even get interpreted) error:

Error: HTTP MKCOL https://##i redacted this due to private information##:********@webdisk.ads.mwn.de/hcwebdav/zotero/ failed with status code 404:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">;

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">;

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/>

<title>404 - Datei oder Verzeichnis wurde nicht gefunden.</title>

<style type="text/css">

<!--

body{margin:0;font-size:.7em;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;background:#EEEEEE;}

fieldset{padding:0 15px 10px 15px;} 

h1{font-size:2.4em;margin:0;color:#FFF;}

h2{font-size:1.7em;margin:0;color:#CC0000;} 

h3{font-size:1.2em;margin:10px 0 0 0;color:#000000;} 

#header{width:96%;margin:0 0 0 0;padding:6px 2% 6px 2%;font-family:"trebuchet MS", Verdana, sans-serif;color:#FFF;

background-color:#555555;}

#content{margin:0 0 0 2%;position:relative;}

.content-container{background:#FFF;width:96%;margin-top:8px;padding:10px;position:relative;}

-->

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div id="header"><h1>Serverfehler</h1></div>

<div id="content">

 <div class="content-container"><fieldset>

  <h2>404 - Datei oder Verzeichnis wurde nicht gefunden.</h2>

  <h3>Die gesuchte Ressource wurde m�glicherweise entfernt oder umbenannt, oder sie steht vor�bergehend nicht zur Verf�gung.</h3>

 </fieldset></div>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Is there anything I did wrong or might it be a problem of my universities webDAV (though it works perfectly fine with other applications) or is it a Problem of Zoteros Servers?

It would be great, if somebody could help me out.

kind regards
Jonas

dstillman · January 19, 2021

We'd want to see a Debug ID for clicking Verify Server, but yes, it's likely a problem with your WebDAV server. You're getting a 404 for an attempt to create a 'zotero' folder, which shouldn't happen if the 'hcwebdav' folder exists (and if it doesn't, that should produce a different error message telling you that).

You may be able to work around this by manually making sure that hcwebdav/zotero exists.

JonasEpple · January 19, 2021

Thank you for the really quick response!
I followed the Steps for a debug ID now: D1876303259
About your workaround: I was wondering why it kept saying /zotero did not exist, since creating it was one of the first things I did, though I will check again if i maybe created it at the wrong location.

dstillman · January 19, 2021

This is what's happening:

(3)(+0000401): HTTP PROPFIND https://********@webdisk.ads.mwn.de/hcwebdav/zotero/ succeeded with 404

(3)(+0000096): HTTP PROPFIND https://********@webdisk.ads.mwn.de/hcwebdav/ succeeded with 207

(1)(+0000069): HTTP MKCOL https://********@webdisk.ads.mwn.de/hcwebdav/zotero/ failed with status code 404

So it's saying that hcwebdav/zotero/ doesn't exist but hcwebdav/ does, but then it's returning a 404 when Zotero tries to actually create the hcwebdav/zotero/ folder.

JonasEpple · January 19, 2021

Oh, wow. I just was completely stupid and pointed Zotero indeed to the top-directory in which i don't have writing permissions, instead of pointing to my personal space.
It works now and I am really sorry for getting you busy with such a foolish mistake -.-
Thanks a lot for untangeling my head and helping me though!