Problem with WebDAV sync

mfpa-bauteil
Report-ID 39437024

I don't exactly since when the following error occurs. Since two years I never had a problem with the sync. I can access the WebDAV storage hosted on an IIS 7 directly in Firefox without a problem. It doesn't matter if it is done over http or https.

If try a sync inside Zotero it can not login to the WebDAV storage neither with http nor https.

http error:
"Unexpected status code 401 in Zotero.Sync.Storage.WebDAV_getStorageModificationTime()"

https error:
"A WebDAV file sync error occurred. Please restart Firefox and try syncing again." or "WebDAV verification failed."
Message after pressing Verify button (translated from German): "The WebDAV server has not accepted username and password. Check your file sync settings."

Resetting the local storage from the server also does not help. The sync with the Zotero Sync Server works fine and all entries have been recreated.

Thanks for your help in advance.
  • dstillman
    That's an "Unauthorized" error from your WebDAV server. Most likely you'll have to take it up with your WebDAV provider.

    An error in getStorageModificationTime() would be a GET request for the 'lastsync' file in your WebDAV 'zotero' directory.

    The verification failure might be for a different request—if you provide a Debug ID for a verification attempt I can tell you exactly what's failing there.
    I can access the WebDAV storage hosted on an IIS 7 directly in Firefox without a problem.
    Generally speaking, you can't test WebDAV functionality in a browser directly, since browsers just make standard GET requests. (In this particular case it looks like at least a GET request for the 'lastsync' file is failing, though, so you could test that.)
  • mfpa-bauteil
    I made an attempt with https. Debug ID is D1179168948.

    An afterwards with http. Debug ID is D761593671.
    If I look inside the Debug output in the HTML part:
    "401 - Not authorized. Access denied because of invalid login data."

    I manage the IIS 7. I have only enabled the Windows authorization and have given full access for a group containing my account.

    The 'lastsync' file I can download within Firefox. The date is set on yesterday 16:44 and contains a "1".
  • dstillman
    edited November 13, 2012
    Assuming this still happens after restarting Firefox, this is a problem with your WebDAV server. It's returning a 401 for an OPTIONS request, as you can see in the debug output.

    You should be able to reproduce this with cURL (or whatever people use to test HTTP requests on Windows).
  • mfpa-bauteil
    edited November 14, 2012
    I set up a new website inside IIS 7 that serves https only and checked all settings. But Zotero does not sync the PDF files. I can access the URL inside Firefox and can mount a network drive in Windows Explorer. Zotero Standalone has the same problem.

    Afterwards I set up the WebDAV on an IIS 7 running on an other machine, but this shows the same symptoms. I tried different settings without success.

    Is somewhere an documentation how to setup WebDAV on IIS working with Zotero?
  • dstillman
    In the past you've had to configure IIS to serve .prop files and files without extensions, but in those cases it just returned a 404, not a 401.

    Testing with Windows Explorer isn't particularly helpful, though—you'd want to test with a dedicated WebDAV client such as Cyberduck. If you can upload and download files (including the "lastsync" and ".prop" files) with a dedicated WebDAV client and not with Zotero, we'd want to know.
  • mfpa-bauteil
    I tried to establish a connection with Cyberduck to the above used server, but no success. Then I have setup a new IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2 - no success. At last I added the integrated WebDAV server component to my local Windows 7. I have choosen three authentication types: anonymous, basic and Windows. It was not possible to access the folder with Cyberduck.

    After that tests I used the empty local WebDAV folder and a domain account with Windows authentication with Zotero. Somehow it could connect and upload all (local) PDF files from Firefox to the local destination. Most of the PDF and prop files were uploaded. Then the green arrow rotated incessantly and nothing happended anymore. The lastsync file was also missing. Since that time every authorisation fails. Restarts of Firefox do not help. Error seems to be: " 401.2 - Unauthorized" - Debug ID D1051905994.
  • dstillman
    I'm afraid you're on your own for this. Zotero works with properly functioning WebDAV servers, and we can't debug problems with individual servers. This sounds pretty clearly like an issue with your server. Again, if you could get flawless upload and download operations with Cyberduck, we could investigate further, but that's about it.
  • mfpa-bauteil
    Thanks so far for your time and comments.
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