'Properly Configured' WebDAV servers and Zotero

wvdude
When searching the forums I am always seeing that lots of people are having problems getting zotero to access other WebDAV servers. Me too. So far, I've tried about 5 of them with no success so far. Whenever I lookup the experience of others with any of these services, I see that the 'official' response is usually something along the lines of:

"Zotero works with properly configured WebDAV servers, and I'm afraid we can't debug problems with individual servers."

Well, ok - I can certainly understand that. Every time somebody screws up their login info or is using a sketchy WebDAV server, Zotero isn't responsible. However, I am really left with the impression that Zotero just really doesn't play well with others and that bothers me.

Can we, perhaps, consolidate a list here of what WORKS and the methods used to get Zotero to sync to a WebDAV server? And, perhaps Zotero, in an effort to maximize compatibility, might want to really drill down on some of these problems and perhaps offer solutions. You might as well not even offer WebDAV as an option, based on the experience that I have had so far.

So, what has worked?
  • adamsmith
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20339/
    This works. Which also demonstrates that the problem isn't on the Zotero side of things.
    You can ask specific questions about specific problems you encounter - as you'll see in many of the threads you mention, Dan will tell you what error Zotero gets back from the WebDAV and you can troubleshoot that with the provider.
    Beyond that, it's probably not a good idea to throw out baseless accusations the first time you post on a forum and then expect people to come rushing to help you...
  • wvdude
    I wasn't asking for anybody to come rushing to my aid. I was, however, trying to help consolidate the known information about WebDAV issues that others were having.

    Also, having a problem finding anything that I wrote that could be considered a "baseless accusation." Just have been frustrated with trying to get Zotero working with different WebDAV services like a lot of other people. Sorry if I sounded like an ass.

    Thank you for the link to the phpZoteroWebDAV thread - it certainly looks pretty promising.
  • adamsmith
    I might have been to harsh - it sounded like you were implying Zotero did this on purpose, but I might have misread that. Moving on:

    cloudme (used to be icloud) should work with Zotero and looks like it has decent support
    http://forum.cloudme.com/viewtopic.php?id=231
    4shared.com is reported as working, too:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/14130/recommended-webdav-services/
  • wvdude
    Cloudme worded for me! Never even heard of it before. I previously tried 4shared without success.

    What I did with cloudme was:
    1. Log in to your CloudMe account
    2. Create a folder named, "zotero" at the root level
    3. To Connect Zotero to CloudMe - use the following URL:
    http://webdav.cloudme.com/username/xios/zotero
    (username must be typed in lowercase)
    4. Boom - there you go.

    Thanks!
  • dstillman
    Every time somebody screws up their login info or is using a sketchy WebDAV server, Zotero isn't responsible. However, I am really left with the impression that Zotero just really doesn't play well with others and that bothers me.
    For what it's worth, it really is a case of Zotero working with "properly configured" servers—and we use only a small subset of WebDAV functionality, so the bar is pretty low. If there's a WebDAV server that doesn't work that should, we're happy to fix it, but I don't think we've seen a legitimate WebDAV compatibility issue in a couple years. If a server rejects a WebDAV PROPFIND request, there's really nothing we can do about it. My sense is that a lot of people try to use free cloud storage providers that don't really care about proper WebDAV support (which is reasonable, since there's not much of a business model there) or that put limits on various things (such as the number of files in a directory). Plain old WebDAV servers (e.g., Apache's mod_dav, which is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to WebDAV) work just fine.
  • wvdude
    Thanks Dan,

    I'm definitely not a programmer, just an end user. I think that I'm getting a better picture of what the heck is going on here, especially since I'm one of those people who have gone down the frustrating path of randomly signing up for different services which claim WebDAV access and had little luck (up until now).

    But my problem has been solved, as of now.
  • cgraf
    Hi Dan,

    > My sense is that a lot of people try to use free cloud storage providers

    I am one of those people. And same as wvdude I went the long way of trial and fail with free storage providers that have (or claim to have) WebDAV support (e.g. GMX Mediacenter, T-Mobile's Online Harddrive, SugarSync). Each one I tried could not be verified by zotero and if they did, they cannot hold more than 1000files in one directory or less than 150MB per file (e.g. scans of documents). The only FREE provider that suits my requirements is cloudme.com.

    Another solution would be to use SMEstorage.com as WebDAV gateway to some non-webdav online storage services but they only allow some hundred megabytes of data transfer per month in their free version - just too limited for setting up a big file repository. I even tried the paid service of SMEstorage, but experienced cancelled file syncs a lot (with the included storage that operates on Amazon's cloud, Microsoft's Skydrive, Box.net and my own FTP server). No idea whether this is an issue with the communication between my computer and the gateway or between the gateway and the storage service.

    It would be good if zotero (or an additional add-on) could check whether a specific webdav server is really able to store the amount of existing attachments and if it could handle the biggest files in the repository.

    Cheers Christian
  • dstillman
    It would be good if zotero (or an additional add-on) could check whether a specific webdav server is really able to store the amount of existing attachments and if it could handle the biggest files in the repository.
    Short of manually maintaining a list of providers, which we're not going to do ourselves, there's no way to do that until the server rejects a request.

    We have an open ticket to add a delay before checking if the uploaded verification test file exists, which might help with storage providers that use Amazon S3 (or other "eventually consistent" backends where uploaded files don't appear immediately). That's about all we can do, though.
  • cgraf
    edited May 29, 2012
    Hi Dan,

    is there any good place like some How-To or FAQ pages where Zotero users could maintain such a list of providers that are compatible?

    Cheers Christian
  • yourwelcome
    UPDATE for CloudMe and Webdav Zotero syncing:
    The webdav address has changed from the above posts. This is what worked for me:

    1) in CloudMe create a "zotero" folder in your root directory
    2) open zotero preferences --> Sync
    3) select http:// (not https://)
    4) webdav.cloudme.com:80/user_name/xios/Documents (notice that there is automatically a "/zotero/" added, so make sure you have created a zotero (case-sensitive) folder in your root directory on CloudMe
    5) enter user_name
    6) enter password
    7)click verify server
  • Robert Forster
    Note:

    I just set up a webdav with cloudsafe.com (free 2 GB) and it worked fine with zotero. I couldn't get my own site (hosted by hostpapa) to cofigure properly.

    I'm a new convert to zotero and I'm finding it to be a great program!
  • ajene
    Thanks a lot wvdude, I just changed from box.com to cloudsafe because I was experiencing continuous sync problems. It just stopped working, and I did not know of this service, which works fine as of now!
  • Breath
    Hi all,

    i ve just found this server
    https://www.free-hidrive.com/

    (5GB free + webdav server)... but I am not able to set it up in zotero.

    here the address:
    http://www.strato-faq.co.uk/2301


    this guy was able to do it...
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23778/sync-with-hidrive-error-report-n-1156317849/

    any idea? thank you
  • dornbuwe
    Just to let people know that 2GBhosting (http://www.2gbhosting.com/) on their normal shared web hosting account does not support webdav ("We would to like to update that we not provide this facility in the shared environment Further if you want this facility go for VPS and dedicate server then we will provide on ").

    Cloudme does work as for me as a sync but the attachments are all zipped so probably only workable as a backup but not in the phpZoteroWebDAV way :-(
  • mronkko2
    The attachments are zipped regardless of which webdav service you use. As far as I know, phpZoteroWebDAV will unzip these for you.
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