Zotero 5.0.18 WebDAV not working with Box.com (Error HTTP 404)

Jason Witman · September 16, 2017

After upgrading from Zotero 4.0 my webdav server with throwing and HTTP 404 error when trying to verify. Worked fine on 4.0 and immediately after upgrading to 5.0, but now with the same setting its giving me an error. I uninstalled and deleted zotero files and reinstalled still same issue.

dstillman · September 18, 2017

Box verifies fine for me in 5.0. We can look at a Debug ID for a Verify Server attempt to see what's happening to you, but this isn't a general problem.

Jason Witman · September 18, 2017

Here is the debug ID: D10630753. I have narrowed this down to occurring after you change settings in the preferences. If you have 4.0 and upgrade to 5.0, it will work until you change the setting. My setting are the exact same. I didn't change them, just hit verify server and ok. Once you do that its broken.

dstillman · September 18, 2017

This is a problem with your Box account:

(3)(+0000003): HTTP OPTIONS https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/

(3)(+0000560): HTTP OPTIONS https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/ succeeded with 200

(3)(+0000001): HTTP PROPFIND "<propfind xmlns='DAV:'><prop><getcontentlength/></prop></propfind>" to https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/

(3)(+0000485): HTTP PROPFIND https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/ succeeded with 207

(3)(+0000000): HTTP GET https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/nonexistent.prop

(3)(+0000549): HTTP GET https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/nonexistent.prop succeeded with 404

(3)(+0000000): HTTP PUT " " to https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/zotero-test-file.prop

(3)(+0000001): {
"Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
}

(1)(+0000646): HTTP PUT https://****:****@dav.box.com/dav/zotero/zotero-test-file.prop failed with status code 404:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<d:error xmlns:d="DAV:" xmlns:s="http://sabredav.org/ns">;
<s:exception>Sabre_DAV_Exception_NotFound</s:exception>
<s:message>Permission denied to access node: zotero-test-file.prop</s:message>
</d:error>

You're getting a 404 — and a permission-denied message — when Zotero tries to upload a test file. You'll have to talk to them. A PUT should never return a 404 for a valid path (in this case, for /dav/zotero/zotero-test-file.prop when /dav/zotero/ exists).

AnnZ · November 3, 2017

I just ran into a similar problem doing the Verify Server (with box.com), we finally realized that my box password had symbols in it. When I changed the password to only have numbers and letters, the Verify Server was successful. Not sure if that's what's going on here, but I thought I'd put it out there.