webdav timeout with 4shared.com

carlboe
edited September 12, 2021
Reference report, bug ID D1115032257

I cannot see documentation that zotero or 4shared have changed anything recently regarding webdav service, which has worked flawlessly for several years. Yet zotero clients on both linux and MacOS cannot connect to the service. The error logs differ slightly for Linux and MacOS. My experiments seem to suggest that the URLs of the form https://user:password@webdav.4shared.edu/zotero no longer work. I am able to establish a webdav connection using other clients (e.g. rclone, curl, webdav://webdav.4shared.com in konqueror browser, ), but zotero gives me a timeout when I try to verify connection to the server under Preferences/Sync

I can visit https://webdav.4shared.com in a browser with VPN turned off, in which case I get prompted for username and password, but then receive a dead end message:
Method Not Implemented

I tried using curl to duplicate the command line type of commands used by zotero, e.g.,
curl -v --user 'cboe@inequality.us:XXXXX' 'https://webdav.4shared.com/testshare/mozilla.pdf' -o foo.pdf

and this succeeded.

Any assistance would be appreciated.
  • dstillman
    edited September 13, 2021
    I am able to establish a webdav connection using other clients (e.g. rclone, curl, webdav://webdav.4shared.com in konqueror browser, ), but zotero gives me a timeout when I try to verify connection to the server under Preferences/Sync
    A GET request isn't representative — it's timing out on a PUT request. So that's what you'd need to test with curl or an external WebDAV client.

    You'd also need to confirm that Zotero's network connection was the same as your network connection elsewhere on the system. See Connection Error for details.

    That's about all we can advise you on. Nothing has changed regarding WebDAV in Zotero in years, and this wouldn't be a problem in Zotero itself.
  • carlboe
    Thank you for the quick response. Switching to a different webdav storage (pcloud) works fine, so that is the workaround. It is not a network connection issue.

    The problem seemed to be that 4shared.com has disallowed basic authentication with webdav. Here is the clearest example that I have:

    $ python /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/webdav/WebdavClient.py https://webdav.4shared.com
    2021-09-12 20:38:17,349: DEBUG: REQUEST Send GET for /
    2021-09-12 20:38:17,349: DEBUG: REQUEST Body: None
    2021-09-12 20:38:17,580: DEBUG: Method: GET Status 401: Unauthorized
    2021-09-12 20:38:17,581: DEBUG: ERROR Response:
    User Name:cboe@inequality.us
    Password:xxxxxx

    2021-09-12 20:38:36,678: DEBUG: REQUEST Send GET for /
    2021-09-12 20:38:36,679: DEBUG: REQUEST Body: None
    2021-09-12 20:38:36,679: DEBUG: REQUEST Header: ('AUTHORIZATION', 'Basic Y2JvZUBpbmVxdWFsaXR5XXXXXXXXXX==')
    2021-09-12 20:38:36,731: DEBUG: Method: GET Status 501: Not Implemented
    2021-09-12 20:38:36,731: DEBUG: ERROR Response:

    Method Not Implemented


    Browser fail in a similar way. With URLs like https://webdav.4shared.com or https://username@webdav.4shared.com or https://username:password@webdav.4shared.com, a popup prompt asks for credentials and then comes a failure (Method Not Implemented).

    yet, the rclone connection succeeds and it uses a Basic auth request (with the same encrypted password), and I cannot tell why it request succeeds and other clients fail. The rclone connection prefaces the authentication with a PROPFIND / HTTP/1.1
    call before the authentication request happens.

    I will try to inquire with 4shared.com to see if they have changed anything.
  • dstillman
    Another report:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/91743/unable-to-verify-webdav-server-request-timeout
  • ajcj
    > I can visit https://webdav.4shared.com in a browser with VPN turned off, in which
    case I get prompted for username and password, but then receive a dead end
    message:
    Method Not Implemented

    I've been getting this message for sometime. I think that's fine. If you can log into your webDAV server on windows/mac by setting up a network place its still working. I think the issue is with 4shared. How (and whom) do I reach out to for this?
  • carlboe
    I submitted a support query asking if anything had changed with the webdav service on 4shared.com, but have not heard back any response. I am a free customer, so do not expect much of a response. You might also write in with a question and maybe multiple questions will trigger a response.

    As I posted, my workaround is going to just be to copy my zotero/ collection from 4shared to pcloud and use the webdav service there to sync with.
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